4 of 7 Crucial Elements of Social Media ROI for Churches

We’re half-way through this series! Today’s post is probably the most important of the bunch. Here’s the links to the three previous posts:

Part 1 - “Know How Social Media Integrates the Vision of Your Church”

Part 2 - “Decide What’s Measurable and What’s Not”

Part 3 – “What is ROM?“

Which Metrics Matter?

This is a long post because it encompasses so much. Therefore, I’m going to give you the answers now and then clarify them below. Ready?

Good metrics are measurements against your goals. Any other kind of measurement is potentially true, but irrelevant.

Build social media metrics from existing references of data. In other words, find a correlation & track it.

The metrics you gather are only as useful as the insights you can apply from them.

Metrics are indicators; over time, they reveal trends.

Here’s the truth: there is no “standard” set of measurement that everyone uses. Your metrics should only consist of that which you value and track.

Metrics Against Goals

Good metrics are measurements against your goals. Any other kind of measurement is potentially true, but irrelevant. Social media isn’t just about numbers, it’s more about reach. Having 5,000 followers on Twitter or 800 friends on Facebook isn’t all that hard to achieve; simply follow thousands and friend hundreds and a fair number of people will reciprocate.

That kind of numeric growth has little value because it doesn’t give you real influence over those people. In fact, since they don’t have a real relationship with you, any updates you make are simply more noise for them to filter out.

Numeric Growth vs. Relevant Reach

Numbers alone are a poor indicator of influence in social media. You must cut through the clutter, have targeted and purposeful content that’s delivered with consistency. Doing just these basic things nearly guarantees some level of growth and reach. However, there’s a difference between reach and relevant reach.

Amber Naslund is one of the brightest minds in social media. She is a renowned speaker, author and thought leader. Amber is the VP of Social Strategy for Radian6, which is in my opinion the ultimate social media monitoring and analytics tool. She has defined relevant reach as: having focus, efficiency and impact.

“You want to expend the effort of growing both the size of your audience as well as the density of its overall relevance to your work.” – Amber Naslund, VP of Social Strategy, Radian6

We’re not against growing your social media fans and followers. If you’re creating valuable content and engaging in meaningful dialogue, you will increase your reach numerically as a natural by-product. What people like Amber and myself are saying is that you must have great intentionality in order to grow a large network with relevant reach.

(Note: I’ll be talking about measurement tools, including Radian6, in my next post.)

Start with What You Know

Build social media metrics from existing references of data. In other words, find a correlation & track it.

What kind of data are you currently keeping track of? Web site visits? Number of emails opened/bounced/click-through rate? Number of event registrations? Any data that gives you helpful metrics about how people are communicating with your church and/or responding to those various forms of communication are potentially helpful because they’ll give you insights into the kind of content and which demographics respond to certain kinds of communications.

With social media, you do have another communications medium and, as such, you can make it part of your communications strategy. That includes measuring using tools in Facebook (such as Insights) as well as Google Analytics to track how links to/from Facebook and/or Twitter and/or Google+ perform. Over time, you’ll begin to understand what “gets traction” with certain demographics, at which times of day and through which channels.

Remember, social media is one of your channels of communications, but it surpasses more impersonal channels because of the relational nature of the toolset.

You should already have an editorial calendar to determine which ministries are communicating to various groups of members and visitors. Too much information or unregulated communications from multiple ministries isn’t information; it’s spam. In the same way, abusing social media as a massive megaphone is like vomiting on your audience. Build a social media calendar and make it part of your information & communication strategy.

Metrics for Insights

The metrics you gather are only as useful as the insights you can apply from them.

Data is just data unless it can prove or reveal useful information and trends. Too much data = information paralysis. While it may be interesting to track the number of times a quote from the pastors’ message was re-tweeted, what insight does that provide? If you’re looking to find how many of the followers are re-tweeting the pastor, it might be helpful to know how relevant their reach is (number of followers who re-tweet their re-tweet). That’s basic measurement to gain some insight. However, I want you to think past the obvious.

Thinking Ahead

What if the weekend message had life application points spread throughout the talk that referenced how the pastor will be expanding on each of those Monday through Friday on the church Facebook Fan page? For example, if the message is about having a teachable spirit (based on Proverbs 12:1) and there are 5 Characteristics of a Teachable Spirit (hat tip to pastor Jimmy Evans), then leave people wanting a bit more by saying you’re going expand on each of those through a Facebook note or a blog post with some life application people easily try each day. Then, prepare ahead of time how you’re going to promote and share the content. For example:

• In the message, mention the church Facebook page.
• Add a link and reminder in the bulletin.
• Put a link to the Facebook page on the church website; add a link by the sermon audio, video & PDF files.
• Tweet the link (using a shortening service like Bit.ly to track the click-throughs) from the church & pastors’ accounts.
• Send an email out on Monday early in the morning to land in the congregants email with a reminder (and a link). On Friday’s email, promote the upcoming sermon and provide an invite link to send to their friends.

These proactive planning creates trackable data. This, in turn, provides a set of metrics to begin tracking over time (establishing a baseline). The insights from these metrics help you in the creation, content and targeting for future campaigns.

Rinse, Repeat, Look for Trends

Metrics are indicators; over time, they reveal trends.

If you’ve not realized it yet, I want to point out that this is work and probably requires more time than you’ve ever considered giving towards social media. It’s lots of consistent work, over a long period of time, with tweaking and testing, that will yield the kind of results that make measuring social media ROI worthwhile. It’s hard. It takes time. It requires consistency. It makes you define your objective, tweak your goals, modify your strategies and change your tactics for realistic expectations. Most of all, it requires a commitment.

“You must inspect what you expect. If you, or your manager, is not willing to define expectations clearly, you will in no way be able to determine your ROI for social media.”

One last quote from my friend Amber Naslund. She has a word about measuring social media ROI that is worthy of capturing & memorizing:

“Measuring success can be different than ROI. You can have successful outcomes that are not measurable in terms of dollars.” – Amber Naslund, VP of Social Strategy, Radian6

How is your church defining the role, goals and metrics of social media? What insights, learning and surprises have you found about using social media for yourself and your church?