Social Media Case Study Proves the ROI of Emily

I am a huge fan of he United Services Organization (USO). I was absolutely captivated by a recent story appearing in the Measurement Standard about how the USO used social media to greatly increase donations.

Here's an excerpt:

In March of 2009, they [USO] hired Emily Hall ... to manage their social media outreach. At the time, my company [The Measurement Standard] was measuring the USO’s media coverage in both traditional and social media. One of the things we tracked was the nature of the conversations. We would look at every mention and decide whether it was expressing support or merely making an observation...

After Em arrived, the first thing we noticed was a distinct shift in the nature of the conversations. For months they had been mostly observational, for instance, “I’m near the USO room at the airport,” or, “Just noticed that XYZ was at the USO last night.” But shortly after Em began her social media efforts, the majority of conversations were expressions of support  for the USO, mostly related to her outreach on Facebook and a “Support USO Friday” campaign.

The Measurement Standard has developed some interesting qualitative standards for categorizing and analyzing comments made in social media. They have cataloged 27 different types of conversations.

This research is interesting for anyone looking to quantify ROI of social media or for ethnographic researchers looking to classify conversations that take place in the Ethernet.

Hit tap: Mark