This must be the month to be informed about professional online achievements, real and otherwise. Last week, LinkedIn emailed me that my profile has been visited with a frequency that places it in the top 1% of their 200 million members. Today, I received a message from SlideShare saying that my content had been viewed over 10,000 times.
With regard to LinkedIn, my reaction was that, because I regularly post new customer-focused and corporate culture material (such as CustomerThink blogs) to the almost 50 groups which I follow, it is gratifying to see the professional response, caibrated by profile visitations. And, having it reflect on personal reputation and image can’t hurt either. However, I’ve read some fairly skeptical, even negative, reactions by others to the same news from LinkedIn. Most of this, at least from my point of view, has to do with questioning the real value of such an achievement – even at financial and monetizing levels – beyond contributing to, and sharing in, personal professional growth in a learning community.
Broadening the topic, the quantification of tangible value for any online content, whether promotional or informational, is one that has continuing challenge for marketers. On a weekly basis, for instance, notices of multiple webcasts and white papers on how to make social media ring the cash register come my way. Many purport to have the ‘holy grail’ answers on how to translate electronic social communication to dollars, euros, and pounds; and, in general, higher ROI. Note: I just received an invitation to attend an online course titled “Cracking the Facebook Code” where, for $595. I can learn ‘the processes and tactics that actually work’ in turning Likes into new business.
There remains, however, no simple, universal or magic formula for doing this (for example, Pepsi-Cola’s 2011 social media gamble in place of Super Bowl advertising, Project Refresh, has been considered only a ‘cosmetic success’ because it failed to produce sales increases) – – and that, from my perspective, is where wanting more definiitive and tangible results of LinkedIn and/or SlideShare high exposure really takes us. What do high viewing numbers really mean? Detractors, especially those focused principally on bottom-line results, want to better understand what this kind of publicity, and the effort involved in creating it, is worth. At the end of the day, it’s a ‘where’s the beef?’ issue to which everyone – whether they are marketing themselves, or a product or service – can relate.
Michael, can you answer the question of how valuable it is to attend a conference or networking event to meet other people? I suspect you can’t calculate an ROI on that, either.
As Einstein, says, not “Not everything that counts can be counted…”
The lack of of an easy-to-calculate ROI is a ready-made excuse not to do something that is hard to measure. Oddly enough, the commentary around LinkedIn’s campaign is probably just more “hey, look at me” marketing from social media experts. I wonder if they have tried to quantify the value of their own blogging. I doubt it, and yet the posts keep on coming.
…and, in fact, have expressed appreciation for the many virtues and values represented by LinkedIn, one of which is surely the network it allows pros to amass. SlideShare has similar benefits, in that it facilitates interchange with communities of interest. That said, on occasion it’s appropriate to question, as others have done (http://www.infoworld.com/t/social-networking/dont-see-the-value-in-linkedin-youre-not-alone-678) the return on time investment represented by the portal and the content service. But, to your point, and the marketing behind LinkedIn’s and SlideShare’s recent proimotional campaigns notwithstanding, overall my blog was meant to support another quote from Einstein: “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.” To my mind, it’s healthy to peirodically review, and even challenge, the tangible and intangible return for any investment.