Comment: “The ROI from Twitter: Don’t bother telling your CFO”

This is a comment on a article on blogs.ZDNet.com by Tom Steinert-Threlkeld.

I think this article’s title is dead on, at least for now, about the ROI that one might expect from Twitter in the enterprise. From the article:

In the question and answer period, after Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein delivered their tips, one of the questions was: “How do you quantify the benefit of Twitter to a CFO?”

O’Reilly’s response: “I wouldn’t bother.”

As I have mentioned in previous posts on this blog and on my Twitter feed, the metrics and tools of measurement for customer service (or any enterprise interaction) via Twitter still remain to be seen. These tools, methods and metrics may be under development in some code bunker somewhere or secured within the walls of a Fortune 500 company with time and money to invest in such matters. They certainly have not become mainstream.  To put it in terms of a familiar meme:

1. Get Twitter account
2. Hire social media guru
3. Monitor Twitter 24/7 for company name
4. Respond to every mention
5. ?
6. Profit

Do you see the problem here? I do.

Public companies have a responsibility to their shareholders to perform due dilligence before they make decisions which might materially impact the financial performance of the company, and thus the investors’ chances of deriving a return. In order to complete this due dilligence, these companies need solid financial data upon which they can calculate return on investment (ROI). The marketing department may see Twitter and other social media as exciting new viral marketing channels to reach out to a specific target market that includes connected individuals, but to quote the article (and almost every other article and blog post on the subject):

Don’t just blast out press releases and promotions. If everything you send tries to sell something, you’ll be ignored.

Okay. So maybe one-to-many marketing in the traditional sense doesn’t work on Twitter. So what does? From the article:

1. Create more value than you capture. This is not about what you can pull out of a stream of ideas, but what you can put in
2. Amplify others. This is not about you. It’s about the best ideas – and bringing them to the surface, for those who care about the subject.
3. Pass it along. Act as a curator of what’s important, funnel the best links and messages from people “who have something to say” to your followers. And you’ll probably get more followers. Because you’re a Tweet stream editor, now.

Now wait - this is all starting to sound very altruistic; like maybe we should break out in a chorus of “Kumbaya.” These suggestions, while appropriate for the casual user of Twitter who is hoping to increase their status amongst their peers, seems to be directly at odds with the primary goal of most for-profit corporations. What American, capitalist, profit-driven corporation can find more than passing PR value in adhering to this advice?

I put some faith in Tim O’Reilly’s experience in these matters - but I agree with the implication in the article that the only real ROI from Twitter right now is for the social media gurus that are touting their wares. In fact, the article mentions that a major theme of the O’Reilly Publishing presentation was about a new book on the subject. So in essence, O’Reilly is saying that there is no ROI from Twitter for now, but you can capitalize on the hype if you just buy my book on the subject. This seems a strikingly familiar dynamic. O’Reilly stands to collect significant ROI from their book on the subject of Twitter, without ever really giving away the secret sauce that companies need to turn Twitter into a profitable venture for traditional industry.

In these economic times where budgets are stretched thin, employees are subjected to rounds after round of layoffs that raise the blood pressure, and millions of people are losing their homes, a service like Twitter truly has some appeal. I think that the place for Twitter in our hearts and minds is already solidified. Twitter is a great equalizer, allowing people to be involved in the news, their community (online or physical) and connect with celebrities and causes in new and exciting ways. Twitter has already sparked conversation about opening a new channel for customer service and customer interaction in general - and this is good news for an industry like mine which needs an infusion of “Web 2.0″ to jump start the next set of waves in the contact center - following up on the previous sets, like CRM, CTI, Virtualization, and more recently Unified Communications (UC).

I’m looking forward to being part of the solution. I am actively encouraging my peers and my managers to embrace Twitter and find new ways to utilize it for business. The response has been very positive, and I feel like many of the benefits of Twitter for a highly distributed workforce are real - considering that capital costs of using Twitter so far have been $0. When you use Twitter on a daily basis, you begin to see its utility very quickly. I think that many of the blog posts and articles out there are incorrectly hanging the word value on Twitter at this point. I hope to explore the utility of Twitter and begin to formulate ways to create value for business from Twitter over the coming months. Look for more on this topic in future blog posts.

I am a Sr. Principal at eLoyalty (a Cisco Partner). The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent eLoyalty’s positions, strategies or opinions.