Unless you’re in the time-wasting business, all of the activity on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. eventually needs lead to dollars in the cash register.  (Or whatever your organization’s equivalent to “dollars in the cash register” may be – donations, participation, applications, referrals, etc.)

So – if you don’t mind me asking – how is that going for you?  Do you even know?  How would you figure it out?

I’m guessing that you probably don’t know.  I know I don’t.  No worries.  It is an admittedly ambiguous question and a somewhat taboo subject for the social media elite.  (“It is a cocktail party, not a pipeline!  I’m an expert!”)

Regardless of your opinions regarding measurement/management, we can probably all agree that there (eventually) needs to be some sort of connection between all of the socializing and business impacts. 

I suggest applying a pipeline model to frame the connection:

Followers

This is pretty easy.  The people that follow on Twitter + Facebook + RSS subscribers + (etc.) = your “followers”.  These people are in the tippy top of the funnel.  They care enough to opt-in, so they represent some degree of value – some more than others. 

If I were an academic, I would include a factor that encapsulates your followers’ follwers and a second factor that takes influence into account.  Klout has a taken a great first whack at this type of calculation – though I would argue that they’re trying to aggregate too much information into a single number.

Be helpful, share/create good content, and participate in the conversation, and the followers number will keep getting bigger.

Engaged followers

These are the follwers that have raised their hand and you probably already know who they are – they’ve replied to a tweet, they’ve posted a comment, you’ve conversed online, you’ve (gasp!) met them in real life, etc. 

How many of these people are in your network?  What made them pipe up?  How often do they pipe up?  How do I make more people pipe up more often?  Now that they’re interacting, now what?  How do I dig a little deeper?

I don’t know the answers, but I’m pretty sure these are the right questions.

(Caveat – XX% of people on social networks participate passively.  (It is probably a big number.  I just don’t know it.)  So people are listening and acting, but not necessarily reflecting their engagement via social activities – commenting, replying, etc.  Hmm.)

Prospects

How do you turn a social follower turn into a prospect?  Well – you’re probably not going to get far if you’re hellbent on driving followers to landing page after landing page in hopes of creating prospects.  This is why I said “frame with” a pipeline model – not “apply” a pipeline model.

Well – then – so – how do you turn a social follower in a prospect?  I say you provide frequent opportunities for engaged followers to take another step:

• Ask them for something.  For example, our friends at Jenna Leigh Lingerie reminded their Facebook Fans to sign up for the email list – “If you haven’t already signed up for the Newsletter – click the below. We send The Newsletter about 2 times a month to update you on sales & new collections!” Big win – lots of new sign-ups and a precedent for future asks.
• Give stuff away.  MailChimp killed it with their t-shirt giveaway Twitter promo.  I gave them my name, postal address, and email address.  And they mailed me a $5 t-shirt.  Was I worth the $5 shirt?  Probably/Maybe.  I’m sure somebody did the math to justify it.  Pearl Jam’s song giveaway will probalby be a big winner, too.
• Conduct a survey.  Yawn-inducing, but tried and true…as long as you don’t call it a “twurvey”.
• Promos/Discounts/etc.  You might want to do this the same way you do your email offers.  Make the same offers?  Different offers?  Probably worth testing…

These programs all provide a mechanism to move the relationship outside of the social web and into your existing sales/marketing funnel. 

If you’re a B2B org, then you want to capture lead data so you can tie the online persona to a real person, funnel them through the normal qualification process, move the conversation into the loving/grubby hands of your sales team. 

If you’re a B2C org, then try to get an email address so that you can market to these people directly, ID them in your shopping cart system, and get more personalized/relevant over time.

Conversions

Once you’ve snagged some followers and funneled them into your marketing machine, someone will eventually buy or donate or apply or refer or whatever…and – if you took care to manage the information flow – you can hopefully tie the business impact to the social channel with some degree of certainty.

Calculations

Now work backwards.  What is the value of a conversion?  How many leads (roughly) convert?  How many engaged followers become leads?  Do some quick math and you’ll have an approximate pipeline value…and hopefully some $$$ justification for your activities across social channels.

Is this approach perfect?  No.  Is it a step in the right direction?  Yes. And a step I suspect that very few social media marketers have considered.