ROI from blogging

Clients are always wary to commit too much time or budget to unproven marketing and PR strategies, so the more of this we see, the better. Good old Forrester leading the way with social media analysis. General Motors, for example, generated $578,000 in value on an investment of $291,000. From Forrester:

Many large companies stand on the brink of blogging, yet they are unwilling to take the plunge. Others, having dove in early, now face the challenge of managing existing blogs without the ability to show that they effectively support business goals. While blogging's value can't be measured precisely, marketers will find that calculating the ROI is easier than it looks. Following a three-step process, marketers can create a concrete picture of the key benefits, costs, and risks that blogging presents and understand how they are likely to impact business goals. This, in turn, enables marketers to answer the key questions, such as whether to blog or not to blog, or to make smart choices about an existing blog.

Comments

[Dennis Howlett]

It's not quite as simple as you portray Drew. There's a lot of 'stuff' to consider and some of charlene's metrics are suspect. As it happens, I reckon this works in her favour.

Disclosure: I was accredited in the report as having contributed to Charlene's thinking and have a copy of the full report. Sorry, no swapsies. Copyright and all that.

[Stuart Bruce - Wolfstar]

Drew, Forrester's metrics are pretty worthless as it uses advertising value equivalents to evaluate editorial coverage. This was considered bad practice when I started in PR 17 years ago. Today it's just plain dumb.

[Lyle Closs]

Hell, given that the metrics are very arguable and that AVEs have been derided by serious marketers and PRs for years, I'd be asking why the apparent value was so poor at just 2:1.
Gotta love the analysts though for trying to force an analysable (is that a word?) format onto the sector.
The most important consideration though is that GMs 'blogs' are really just corporate churn, with no personality, and no discernable strategy apart from 'look, we do blogging'. It's a pity that Forrester feels that they can put this example up as an example of the success of the format.
Lyle

[John Cass]

In the companion case study about general motors I wonder if Charlene measured the negative impact of word of mouth marketing from General Motors not responding to every comment. I have spoken with a few GM FastLane blog readers and they were not happy with the lack of response. In fact one gave up on thinking of buying a new car. Did Charlene include that in determining her numbers?

[Rob Artisan]

You cannot put a value on everything.

Marketers are trying to make marketing a mathematical equation - it is not.

I have been contacted to give comments to a very well respected publication about blogging thanks to my blog; it really broke the ice for me and I will be contributing as much as I can to the magazine.

I helped another business magazine and I hope they will do me a favour.

And a senior journalist from a national has contacted me about an entry. This could be some story if published. (More details, hopefully, on my blog)

I have also had many positive comments about my blog.

How much is that worth?

£7.22?