Government 2.0 Club

[Backstage] Social Media ROI

Posted on 27. Mar, 2009 by budgeteercloseAuthor: budgeteer Name:
Email: melissamerrell@yahoo.com
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About: See Authors Posts (7) in 1:45 Fri, Blog, Government 2.0 Camp Day 1

Chris Hemrick of Booz Allen Hamilton did a great job of kicking off and facilitating this presentation! I (@krazykriz) presented a few slides from a three-hour presentation on “Measuring the Impact of Social Media in Government” that Ari Herzog (@ariherzog) and I delivered for the “Social Media for Government” conference the day before. Those slides are embedded here and the notes from our dialogue are below the slides:

Enterprise 2.0 - how to use tools to improve communication within agencies (platform example - Intellipedia: a wiki used to share intelligence across agencies).

Overarching question: How much time are you saving using these tools? Some examples:

Decrease cycle time in decision making/more efficient information gathering. Wiki’s (and Twitter) can help your organization think topically.

Timely access to relevant information in support of business functions and missions.

Increased diversity of thought and improved relationships between workers (experts, opp for employees to have voices be heard, crowdsourcing).

With alot of baby boomers retiring, social media is a great way to share intellectual property.

Creates flatter and more transparent organizations.

Better positioning for a distributed workforce (ex. Skype is free).

Question on how to get participation.
A: Best way is to put out content with value. It has to be top down and bottom up.

Metrics Discussion

Metrics presentation will be posted on the Gov20Camp wiki and the blog www.genrationshift.blogspot.com.

Open discussion/suggestions about Metrics and ROI:

Start a pilot (build a prototype) so that you can show the value and possibilities.

Layout all the task that are required and create a project plan.

Show which communities are commenting or picking up on the information that you’re putting out there.

Set metrics of success early and reward internal use (lots of debate about whether this works or not). Incentive external audiences with good content.

Financial types will want to know the hard return down the line.

Getting participation is all in internal marketing, you have to make it sexy and exciting.

What is the value of a conversation? What is the value of a relationship?

OMB used a wiki and shaved a third of the time off a 10 week project cycle.

We need to trumpet our success.

Case study: Video contest to educate people. Sold it to management as a test to see if social media was right for the agency. 140 videos were submitted, but still unable to answer the question, did it influence the opinion of the participants?

Hypothetical: A PSA on Radon. On YouTube you would be able to quantify views.

One last example: One of BoozAllen’s client switched from an e-newsletter to a blog. Lots of time savings on newsletter development and the content becomes the focus.

Chief barrier to adoption of social media: fear of what people don’t know about social media. Good to ask management “What is the risk if you don’t embark into social media?”

Closing thought: It takes a while to build trust, but once you do, it will add alot of value to your organization.

Tags: "measuring impact of social media and government", "social media and metrics", #gov20camp, backstage, measurement, ROI