‘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.

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.

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.

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