Part three: growing up.

My social web program is going to be great when it grows up. I'm going to have loyal customers out there singing my praises and giving me new ideas - for free! They are going to tell me when there is a problem so I can make things right. Every department is going to be talking to customers and using the feedback to increase sales and all those cavemen who said my social media program was just another bullshit fad will be working for me when my social web program grows up.

Now some hard parts.

You can't have a conversation without a voice. No one wants to talk to a PR machine anymore than they want to talk to a telemarketer, but are you going to talk to someone whose personality changes with each conversation? Think about the randomness of the call center experience - who is going to pick up the phone today? How are you going to integrate with the organization and maintain a cohesive persona?

You can't develop a voice without something to talk about, and your favorite subject better not be how great you are. What else (beside you) are your customers interested in? What do you know about the people that would never consider your brand, or the customers you lost? The data from last year's online survey is not going to help. Neither will asking your sales force or marketing department - they are in the business of messaging, not listening.

Every conversation with your customer is an opportunity to learn and what your social web strategy is going to need conversation topics. So instead of trying to learn what your customer thinks about about you, use the time to learn about your customer. You'll have no shortage of feedback once you have them engaged.

You don't have to look to far to see the development of a process here...

Part two: The ROI of wearing pants

How to determine the ROI of wearing your pants: subtract from your income all clients who would do business with that guy (or gal) that doesn't wear pants.

The idea that you cannot measure the value of social media to an organization is perpetuated by people who don't like to be measured, monitored, or accountable.

The exciting thing about the social web is not that the value can't be measured: its that it can be measured in so many ways. If your company spends money hiring PR consultants, fielding sales or customer service surveys, conducting focus groups, or planning marketing campaigns then you have an opportunity to measure how a social web program creates value.

I'm not implying that these activities can go away (cuz' we'd be out of a job) but there are specific results that most traditional communication and research methods are trying to achieve and they are better served using social web tools. Since each of these activities has a price (what you pay vendors) and a cost (your internal resources) you can measure where social web programs reduce cost and deliver better results.

Part one: I hate you.

It took all of three minutes for me to figure out that I hate you. There you sit, yammering on at my boss about some new media drivel and why its going to be so important to me. It took me ten hours to put together my draft of next year's budget. I have justify the value of every penny I spend, grovel and plead to get a dime of travel or training approved, and there you are, talking nonsense about 'joining the conversation' and telling us that something my teenage son just found out about is going to change our business. This room is full of people; sales, product development, customer service, IT, quality assurance - if we can't show how the money that we scratch and beg for each quarter improves the company's bottom line, we're out on the street. You can't even explain how we measure what you want to do - there, you just tried to tell us that its so damn special it can't be measured.

I wont pretend to understand what you are trying to sell me on, but if I ignore you long enough and throw enough roadblocks in your path, you will probably go away.