Hi Thilde,
cool websites. Would you say whuffies can be used to track Return of Investment/Involvement for a company’s social media accounts?
Astrid

Hi Astrid

Thank you for your comment.

Well, personally I don’t really believe that you can measure ROI (return of investment) directly on any social media activity as it’s difficult – if not impossible – to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations – which are not quantifiable. But there is obviously no doubt that there is some kind of return of involvement if you manage to create dialogue and conversations with social media users – it just might not be tangible. If you really manage to build authentic relationships and gain beneficial feedback from the tribe surrounding your brand the return of investment will be visible through long term, loyal supporters of your brand. And that can’t be measured through The Whuffie Bank.

You could probably use The Whuffie Bank as an indication on how well people interact with you or your brand on Facebook or Twitter – and I guess you can translate that into social media involvement – but The Whuffie Bank doesn’t measure the amount of people who know about your brand through social media or how many people actually buy your product based on their interactions with you through social media.

Does that answer your question? I would love to hear your thoughts on ROI on social media activity – and The Whuffie Bank.

Best,
Thilde

Interesting dialog, in my opinion, the ever discussed term is hard to use in regards to The Wuffie Bank. ROI is a pure financial measurement, so you have to know exactly how much in value ($, DKK, etc), and how much you get in return in value (still $, DKK, etc.).

This is often I think misunderstood when working with social media, because the formula is very hard to implement in many cases. The formula got developed and is being used and well documented on various mass communication media channels, such as TV, Radio, Print etc. Especially the Media agencies around the world have made ROI popular through their well documented sales modeling tools.

I came across this fun slideshow by Oliver Olivier Blanchard about ROI and social media, explaining it better than any other I have seen. He have invested a lot of time in finding ways to make financial investment measurement on social media, I can really recommend spending time on his blog http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/social-fresh-good-friends-and-the-definitive-social-media-roi-presentation/

Thanks for a quick and thorough answer! Of course number of retweets doesn’t – and shouldn’t – equal sales numbers, but once you’ve accepted that retweets and dialogue on Twitter can be used as an indicator of how people respond to your product/brand, I think Whuffie or the like is interesting to look into. At least if counting manually is the other choice.
Thanks for an inspiring tweet and blog post!
Best,
Astrid

Hey Thilde

Great post – I actually came across Whuffie Bank myself yesterday – I agree with you that we shouldn’t need to get “paid” (virtually, or otherwise) for doing good, and that the Law of Karma, is naturally to give and get back – organically.

But I have to say, not everyone is inspired to do this, and if anything can motivate people to think before they act, speak or do, it has to be a good thing – not all are blessed with altruism and “treat others how you wish to be treated” mentalities.

So I say good for you Whuffie Bank! On being brave enough to step forward in trying to bring this focus of being to the forefront of people’s minds – because if we all had these attributes, lets face it, the world wouldn’t be in the state it is today!

I won’t comment on the ROI issue – apart from agreeing with Jonas in that @thebrandbuilder does have the best way of explaining and getting to the heart of the ROI debate, in the funniest way :)

Keep up the good work Mindjumpers

Jo
@brandguardian

Hi Jo

Thank you so much for commenting.

I agree with your point that not everybody does well without the prospect of getting something in return, and in that respect Whuffies are a nice little reward. In this case, a currency of social reputation is definitely better than one of money so in that respect the Whuffie Bank is a great initiative.

Best,
Thilde