What is it with all of this social media buzz? Where’s the value? The problem is in the metrics, or lack thereof. You can measure metrics such as Facebook fans (or “likes”), Twitter followers, retweets, blog comments and other such metrics but you want to know the bottom line. It’s hard to measure the return on investment in time, energy and even money (time is money isn’t it?) invested into social media so, unfortunately, all too often it gets ignored. Unless you’re tracking how many fans show up at your competitions because of your printed schedule cards or by having your event listed in the paper’s “community calendar”, then it’s hard to measure the ROI on many of the marketing actions that we already know that we have to do. Consider this, coach. Practice 1,000 double-legs, shoot 1,000 free throws, run 100 miles… how many more “W’s” will that bring? As a coach, you trust in the cumulative effect of daily effort. You can’t work hard today and expect the results tomorrow. Sometimes you won’t even see them this season! But you will see incremental gains. How will marketing, more specifically social media marketing, help you? A few of the benefits that my clients see are: * more people learning of your mission and vision * increased attendance * more successful fund raisers * better attended optional workouts and off-season training * higher participation rate * more community involvement * better parental involvement * fewer communication breakdowns If you are not fully utilizing the tools available to you then you should re-evaluate your program. Is it ok to operate at 90%? 80%? 70%? Jim Harshaw Riot Marketing More fans. More media. More money. Less work.