An Employee's Look at Social Media ROI

When I led the database marketing department at Nordstrom, I kept a scorecard that quantified the incremental profit each employee generated on an annual basis. Every employee was graded on the amount of incremental profit he/she generated on an annual basis. When all employees know that generating profit is important, intriguing collaborations occur. The email marketing manager works closely with the business intelligence manager, for example, both attempting to create profitable sales for the company.

And when the CMO wanted to eliminate positions, I simply pulled out the scorecard and asked him which profitable activity he wanted to eliminate.

Needless to say, job security is protected when you can point to tangible increases in profit.

For social media managers, it isn’t critical to tie tweets to profit. But it is important to find a set of metrics that prove the value of the employee. CMOs need to know that if the employee is no longer with the company, a certain set of metrics will begin to turn negative — and that's a "bad" thing.

So, my social media friends, what are the metrics that'll help you be compared on equal footing to your marketing co-workers? In next week's column, I’ll consider some of the metrics that a social media manager might publish to be compared with other employees on a fair basis.
Kevin Hillstrom is president of MineThatData, a database marketing consultancy. He can be reached at kevinh@minethatdata.com.