What is The Value of A Tweet?

A double-whammy often occurs when you introduce yourself to someone new and the inevitable question of “so what do you do?” As a baby-faced millennial, I almost cringe when I say I handle Public Information for a government agency. It is almost always followed up with some variation of  “so like Facebook and stuff?” Indeed, like Facebook and stuff.

Tweets by NewYorkVeterans

This is not unique to me, anyone who works in the digital communications or social media realm faces this type of hazing especially from different generational cohorts. If you said you worked in advertising or outreach for large firms, no one would think to condescend that work but move it to the digital sphere and it becomes fair game.

But this post isn’t about complaining about this value and generational difference, it is about creating a substantive argument against it. It is about learning the value of a tweet, so to speak.

In an evaluation of how U.S. Federal government agencies engage with social media when speaking to executive-level administrators about the role and value social media has in their work that it was a net positive. The most frequently cited reason for this was simple, it helped them in a relatively low-cost way to engage with their constituents on their preferred platforms.

Government agencies want to reach audiences in those social spaces they frequent on a daily basis. Several interview partners recognize the need to reach audiences that do not routinely interact with federal agencies and are therefore excluded from decision-making and policy-making processes. They see the use of additional channels on social media sites as a way to institutionalize their interactions and bring citizens’ knowledge into government. The following quote is therefore representative for many agencies: “Get the message out to the audiences that might not normally hear it and have a lower engagement with government.”

(Mergel, 2013)

As recent elections and social movements (Arab Spring, #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter) have demonstrated globally, people are increasingly using social media as their only news source. This creates a duty for governments to meet this change and to meet it with real information and facts their constituents can look to for guidance and news. As someone responsible for the dissemination of information regarding over 750,000 people, it becomes an important task to fact check, research and vet organizations as well as news before disseminating it to constituents. Without this, constituents would need to rely upon less than reliable and more biased sources for their information. The lack of trust and confidence in government does make bridging this gap difficult. However, the constant interaction that social media allows between government and constituents helps in this endeavor as well. But let’s also be honest, creating content for social media also allows the government to have direct control over their messaging and that is appealing especially in say, an election cycle.

As the infographic above demonstrates,  research, evaluation, and engagement are just some parts of what makes up the responsibilities of a good social media manager. There are a range of tasks social media managers handle that also fall under more “traditional” jobs such as outreach, and strategic planning. Both of which are integral to service providing businesses and non-profits for expanding brand awareness and reach. I have found that explaining the work of a social media manager as jobs that have long already existed makes it easier to pitch the value of their work. It also provides a more understandable context for those who may be skeptical to understand the work social media managers do and how it increases value for their organizations.

 [R]eturns from social media investments will not always be measured in dollars, but also in customer behaviors (consumer investments) tied to particular social media applications. Consumer investments include obvious measures such as the number of visits and time spent with the application (the blog in this case) as well as more active investments, such as the valence of blog comments and the number of Facebook updates and Twitter pages about the brand. These investments can then be used to measure key marketing outcomes such as changes in awareness levels or word-of-mouth increases over time.

(Hoffman and Fodor, 2010)

This is a difficult concept for traditional managers to understand as a recent MIT review notes. That value is something beyond a dollar value returned to the company. The value has to go beyond monetary and into other aspects like brand awareness (see Wendy’s online Twitter battles it engages in with other brands) and brand campaigns which can drive sales (see Nike’s Colin Kaepernick campaign). On their own, there is no monetary value that can be captured from these initiatives but what these brands do through these actions is add themselves to the online conversation and create a buzz that makes people more likely to engage with and possibly support with their money or endorsements these brands.

A great example of this is beauty guru YouTubers. They have made their entire existence and livelihood based on these associations. There is no inherent value in having someone like James Charles (hey sisters!) use a particular palate from a particular brand except that assuming favorable views, it will become an endorsement to his millions of followers throughout social media that could drive sales.  Even Forbes thinks he deserves a spot on the “30 Under 30” and having over a million Instagram followers and 400,000+ YouTube following is a large part of that. #NotSponsored

This is a world in which customers are fully in control of their online experiences and where their motivations lead them to connect online with other consumers while they create and consume online content, much of it user- rather than marketer-generated…The social media environment is largely consumer — not marketer — controlled. And marketers who don’t understand that do so at their peril.  Second, and more importantly, the narrow focus ignores more qualitative objectives — such as the value of a tweet about a brand — that flow from the unique capabilities of the Internet and have no obvious analogues with traditional media metrics. This is a powerful point that is often overlooked.

(Hoffman and Fodor, 2010)

Social media and those who utilize it will only continue to increase in importance as more and more of the world becomes interconnected with the help of the Internet and Web 2.0. As people continue to become more participatory on the internet through social media, it becomes incumbent for organizations and governments to join in on this digital conversation and to learn how to master these platforms. We are a society increasingly disconnected with a desire for connection, social media and those who manage it provide the technical, intellectual and emotional knowledge to help bridge this gap. Perhaps there is no concrete value to a tweet. But perhaps like the “shot heard round the world” created the impetus for the creation of the most powerful nation in the world, there was a tweet heard round the world that impacted the entire course of history for all of the Middle East and the rest of the world.

You only have 280 characters. Make them count.