Thinking about proving ROI for business inspired me to look at this great SlideShare on metrics for online communities:

This nicely shows the range of issues businesses should consider with social media implementation and ROI. But what’s the quick and easy version? I have uploaded this one slide which focuses just on the use of KPIs (key performance indicators) to track value. Obviously the results each need to be owned and actionable. Also I have just used two examples from the four Balanced Scorecard (BSC) perspectives, when you’d need to use all four.

So after deciding your business objectives, group them under the four BSC perspectives, trying to if possible allocate across all four:

1. ‘Financial’

How do we want our shareholders/trustees to see us?

2. ‘Customer’

How do we want our customers to see us?

3. Internal ‘Business processes’

What business processes must we excel at to satisfy our customers, shareholders/trustees?

4. Internal ‘Learning and growth’

How do we sustain our ability to change and improve?

Then set measures and targets against each, both quantitative and qualitative, with a regular review of results set up, and with ownership to enable actions against these to help improve under-performance for example.

This balanced approach to setting up a way of monitoring SME social media effectiveness is my recommendation for demonstrating ROI in the simplest way possible.