Flickr Photo: Felix IdanLast week, I got some evaluation results back from a social media training I did last month in DC. My favorite comments was:

Holly talks too fast.

That came up at least a half a dozen times. Point taken: in the future, no coffee before my session. But my second favorite comment was this:

Holly said we have to demonstrate the value of social media tools to our bosses. But how do you show that blogging leads to donations, or volunteers?

That, dear evaluator, is the $10,000 question. In social media, we encourage our stakeholders to interact with each other as much or more than they interact with us. Connecting the dots between your MySpace page and that new volunteer you got, however, becomes very difficult. But just because it's a tough question to answer doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

This week in WeAreMedia, we're focused on ROI (Return on Investment). Beth Kanter suggests that a MadLib may help some of us begin to articulate our social media ROI. I'll do just about anything Beth tells me to, so I gave it a try. Here's the MadLib she constructed for us:

Our organization (fill in the name) is implementing a social media strategy that includes (fill in the blanks). The key benefits are (list).

Here's my completed version:

NTEN is implementing a social media strategy that includes BLOGGING. The key benefits are:

• INCREASED website traffic overall
• BETTER search engine rankings
• MORE conversation with and between NTEN Members
• It's an easy CHANNEL for saying things we think are important
• ESTABLISHES and MAINTAINS the voice/personality of our organization
• EVALUATES community opinions/interest by how often certain posts are read or commented on

This is a good start, but I'm only 10% of the way to establishing an ROI. Think of ROI as a simple equation:

(Time & Money Saved + Money Earned) - (Time & Money In) = ROI

Ideally, you want a positive number out of the equation.

Tracking what you put into the social media experiment is pretty easy: I spend about 45 minutes a day on our blog; the rest of our staff spends probably an hour a day, combined. We don't really spend any money on it, because we're not advertising and it's part of our content management system. So, our investment is about 8.75 hours per week of time.

Tracking the value of the benefits is the really tough part. What value should we place on the higher search engine ranking? What value can we assign to the voice of our organization? We can't directly tie blog readership to people who join NTEN, either. If I can't quantify all the benefits, how can I calculate ROI and really demonstrate the value of social media?

For now, I'm happy enough to say that I FEEL like our investment is paying off. What about you? Are you satisfied with felling that your investment is worth it? How are you tackling ROI?