Social media: is it worth it?

One thing I’m asked a lot about is to show ‘Return on Investment’ (RoI) – does putting in the time and effort into social media really lead to returns? Is there any evidence of that? 

First, it’s always hard to prove RoI – you can never know for sure if your post/comment is what led to, say, a particular policy or behaviour change. And while there are thousands of measurable metrics in anything digital, whether that is really directly measuring impact is hard to say for sure.  

At best, we can take any metric – particularly a trend like a rise in comments or shares - as a good proxy indicator of, say, engagement. But always focus on the trend, never the absolute numbers, which can be unhelpful or misleading. And importantly, take into account qualitative measures – the content of comments, quality of debate, who is sharing – as much as the quantitative ones.  

Here are 3 case studies from my backyard that I think prove the value of investing in social media.  

1) Sparking debate and collecting data, while building audience 

What

A LinkedIn article penned by Miranda Wolpert, Wellcome's Head of Mental Health priority area in her first week on the job. 

Engagement

At the time of writing, the post has had over 20 shares, 12 comments and hundreds of clicks. The short SurveyMonkey poll she attached to it has had over 150 thoughtful responses. 

Miranda shared the post on her Twitter, where it was shared nearly 100 times, including by a few influencers in the space like @mental_elf. It received nearly 100 replies on the various tweets and retweets, spreading the discussion far and wide. For even more, just look at Miranda’s Twitter feed, where she’s been retweeting and replying to the thoughtful responses she’s received. 

Using our social listening tool Pulsar, I did a quick analysis of the engagements her LinkedIn post has had. 

It also allowed me to identify the key people who were talking about it – and how they are connected.  

And the countries where engaged users were based. 

Is this RoI? 

I would say yes. What I like about Miranda’s post is it was very clear in its purpose and message – it posed a question and wanted to know people’s responses. A lot of people took her post as a thoughtful prompt and offered their own thoughts, which she then responded to by replying and sharing. And every reply would have been flagged in that person’s network, so others would have been made aware of the post too (which they may have then read, even if they didn’t choose to comment).  

Since Miranda’s aim was to hear people’s opinions, I think that was very much achieved. And as an added bonus, she’s really engaged the mental health community in her team's work right from the get-go and shown the listening approach they want to take – and really shown that she’s listening.  

2) A one-man campaign  

What

Wellcome Director Jeremy Farrar has long been frustrated with the lazy imagery used with vaccination news stories in the media. Often featuring needles and crying children, he believes this is contributing to the fear factor surrounding vaccination. He calls out this bad imagery on his Twitter whenever he sees it, in the hope that it may reach the ears of the people who might change this.  

Engagement

There’s a clear sense that Jeremy’s sentiment is shared by others, at least those within his peer group/circle. Each of the posts – as you see above – get a respectable number of likes and shares, and there are messages of support from people around the public health community and beyond.  

But it can be argued that this wasn’t an effective campaign because the people with the power to actually address the problem - the editors who select the images – aren't in that bubble.  

What changed was this tweet where Jeremy, on advice, changed tactic slightly – he tagged not just the publication, but actual journalists on that newspaper. Sure, they may not have been the people making the image choice – but they have sway, or at least can pass on feedback, to the person who does.

Is this RoI? 

It’s important not to confuse this with ‘Did this achieve it's goal?’. If the goal is to change the way the Guardian – or any of the publications he’s called out – pick vaccine imagery, or at least make them think a bit more carefully about it, we can’t really tell yet. All we can do is monitor future stories and note any change (or not). But in terms of (eventually) reaching the people who might help make that change – yes, he achieved it.  

More importantly, in terms of RoI, I’d say his tweets have also drawn attention to his message, and the problem, attracted new interest and followers to the issue, and reinforced the bond between him an his network, as shown by the shares and replies. This kind of personal buy-in and, to some extent, trust, is a strength of a personal brand and can only be earned through genuineness, passion and value. I think most of these people who retweeted and commented feel that, which is valuable for future issues where people power is needed. 

3) Adding the human touch 

What 

Michael Chew is a Science Portfolio Adviser and one of Wellcome’s longest serving staff. He genuinely loves his job and science, and wanted to celebrate the many researchers and research outputs that Wellcome’s grants lead to, all over the world.  

Here’s a selection of the tweets: 

Engagement

Here’s a graph of posts tagging Michael over the first six months of 2019 and their engagement. 

Sure, the numbers aren’t huge, but there’s consistency in the frequency here.  

An analysis I did using Pulsar shows 127 unique authors in this, with the majority interested in Health, Diseases, Science, Research (based on a trawl of biography words). 

It’s also interesting to see the range of countries where engagement has come from: 

Is this RoI? 

By far the best evidence of this is not the numbers, but the qualitative comments he gets back, the anecdotal tales I hear from colleagues, and something that is hard to capture and measure – how the research, particularly early career researcher – community feels about him, Wellcome and how he makes them feel.  

I’ve heard several times how much researchers value his tweets, celebrating their research and achievements, drawing attention to their important scientific findings, and genuinely thanking them for contributing to human knowledge and improving human health.  

It sounds cheesy, but we often forget how research is built and done by human hands. Humans need care, encouragement, reward. And with so much research going on, it’s hard for Wellcome as an organisation to properly acknowledge everything, even in a small way. These few words – taking the time and effort and thought to acknowledge their toils and celebrate their work – is really appreciated. As a result,  many researchers seek him out at conferences, look forward to meeting him after their interactions online, and hope to appear in a Michael Chew selfie in future.   

Michael, with decades of experience in science and at Wellcome, knows these research areas and these researchers extremely well. He uses that knowledge to do what Wellcome hopes to in research – sharing research widely, connecting and convening people, celebrating the creation of new knowledge and what it does to improve human health. And many of his colleagues within the organisation and community respect and admire him for that.

It puts a human face to Wellcome, strengthens people’s attachment to the organisation, and improves how people trust and think of it – not as a scary, anonymous, robotic body but an organisation made of people, very human, striving with passion to improve human health. 

That's RoI.