Ouch: “The more I think about this — the more my brain hurts.” Ohmy: “Respectfully, this is complete nonsense.” Jeez: “This goes into my “Are you Kidding me with this crap” Hall of Fame!” This is Hurting: “The only thing more worrying than the content of this article is the fact that people are going to think that because it’s published on the HBR blog it must be true.” These are only the first few comments on this blog by HBR: “Return on Influence, the New ROI“. Oliver Blanchard is leading the pack of people who are thinking the blogpost made no sense at all. You don’t see this that often, at HBR. The discussion is worth checking out.
So what is al this criticism about (oh, sorry, I just love it when the first comment on a blog just KILLS the blogpost, it’s a tic)? The main point of Amy Jo Martin was that numbers help justify decisions, remove some risk, and limit accountability. And that there’s a distinction to be made (in the measuring of social media influence) between:
- “cold metrics”–reach, frequency, page views, impressions, eyeballs captured.
- “warm metrics”–engagement levels, viral factors, sentiment analysis.
Martin writes:
“…I realized that social media provided a way to measure something fan affinity in a way a TV spot never could. Why? Social media communication is two-way. It’s a dialogue versus a monologue. Instead of promotions, it creates conversations, sometimes unprompted conversations that can be listened to, recorded, and measured. No longer did we have to say, “Trust us, our fans really like the team.” Suddenly I had data to show how fans really liked us…. Once you recognize that each entry into the social conversation is creating influence, you track it. A tweet is a transaction. So is a retweet. So is a purchase that results from a retweet. Unlike outdoor and TV advertising, say, marketers can track online behavior from a social channel from the initial marketing message all the way through to purchase.”
According to Oliver Blanchard, Martin is wrong in almost every point she tries to make. If you are in the business of calculating something, metrics are metrics, Blanchard notes. Math is math. Stick to empirical data. And, writes Blanchard: “…what you just did there is attempt to measure the average value of a fan (incorrectly at that). Where was the investment/cost figure in that equation? You only talked about revenue generation.” And he adds this:
“As for “influence” metrics, or even the concept of influence as a measurable phenomenon (cause and effect and/or correlation), when someone comes up with a legitimate unit of measure for it, then we can start talking about a Return on Influence equation. Until then, it’s simply not a plausible discussion.”
What do you think of the discussion and the concept of Return on Influence? Do you think this is the measuring-way-to-go or do yoy think the remarks of Oliver Blanchard and the rest stand ground? Very curious!
Return on Influence is complete gibberish. Every metric eventually results in some form of Return on Investment. By doing influence marketing, one is looking for a return on their INVESTMENT, since marketing costs MONEY.
What one should be looking at in term of influence are hard metrics like reach, impact, changed behaviour etc etc.
And I agree there is no such thing as cold or warm metrics. I personally are far more comfortable with Owyang’s ROI pyramid: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/12/13/framework-the-social-media-roi-pyramid/. Just different levels on which you can measure (return).
Some things are easy to measure, others require a little more effort. But metrics are metrics and return is return: On a investment
I agree with Olivier & Martin. This is the easy way out.. As Olivier puts it: If you put money in, you have the get money out. Variables must be equal.
Also, how do you define ‘influence’? This differs from each ones point of view, and is context & time related. Justin Bieber with a Klout score of 99 does not influence me to go buy Nutella for example.
Boring but true. I also agree with Olivier and the rest of the lynchmob and Martin and Rob. Amy should have not touched the term ROI, warm and cold metrics but just stick with the data provided and measurable. Or find another way to interpret unmeasurable data but not link it to ROI which per definition implies measurable.
Another intersting discussion is the way this blog was brought, the platform that published it and the level of influence and authority they have. This article should have never been published on Harvard Business Review. Also, it should have been marked as `reflection on..` or whatever, not as a factual piece. A good editor would have reviewed this piece, see what was wrong with it, and asking for more specilized input by people like Olivier.
What would a good conversation manager do in this case?
I think it is pretty stupid for Amy not to participate in the discussion but seeing that she just recovered from cancer kinda puts the whole thing in perspective for me.
Completely in line with all of the commenters on this blog, and most of the commenters in the original post on HBR, I too agree that the claims made in the posting are of little value.
‘Little value’ because I like the idea of creating or looking for / finding measurements to justify investments in social media. At best, Amy is fueling the discussion which eventually will only lead to better understanding and insights of the concept ROI (where I stands for Investment, of course).
Furthermore, I agree with the remark that Amy gives at the end of the posting that “the more marketers accept a concept [...] the quicker social media industry standards will surface. But to be honest, these are the only two things I like about the post.
Given the intense reactions on the HBR site, particularly the level of engagement that an icon as Oliver Blanchard shows in the comments, assures me that marketers will find a general accepted concepts and social media measurement standards.
Creating a fuzzy, faulty re-definition of a business metric is not the way to go and certainly not the way to get other professionals in the field following you blindly.
By the way, Amy claims to have invented the ‘return of influence’ three years ago… but a short search on Google reveils that the domain returnoninfluence.com has been registered since February 2007. It’s a very small website claiming they will explore the elements of the concept. Given the fact that there is nothing posted since a week after launching the site means at least that they, too, had a hard time selling the concept.
Cold and warm you say? I thought that was called hard and soft metrics. Oh well, the point stays the same.