That said, QOE – quality of engagement – only matters to the extent that it is producing value… more value than its costing… some would call this ROI.

Return On Investment is always the name of the game for business – even when you can’t measure it. Just look at PR – that’s been the mantra of PR people for years. Even though I can’t measure 1 specific PR campaign very accurately, or even the whole darn continued campaign… I can get a much softer feel of whether or not its effective, and whether or not its worth the time spent.

QOE is nothing if its not producing a positive ROI. Just b/c that number is hard to calculate, doesn’t mean “more return than cost” is still not the primary objective. So long as a business’ goal is to generate a profit than ROI is a key marketing metric.

With social media nearly everyone in the world is indeed just a click away. The threshold is gone, it’s all free, real-time, and one could easily make 20 new acquaintances a day across the globe

Compare that to exchanging letters with your penpal across the ocean…

Social media obliterate frontiers, extend your horizon, and increase mutual understanding. You can reach out, but also be reached. You can single out contacts and get in deep or superficial, anything goes

But, in my opinion the very -very- best part is that you’ll also be able to follow those that inspire the ones that inspire you. You might actually inspire the person who inspires you, by inspiring someone else

It’s all about giving and getting at the same time. If someone unfollows you or you unfollow someone else, there’s no harm done. It’s not like deciding not wanting to talk to your neighbour anymore, which kind of complicates everyday life

It’s not only about QoE, it’s also about Quality of Relationships – we are actually getting better at dialogues, interaction and relationships because of social media

Measuring the Quality of Engagement is in itself an exercise that should enhance the quality of your engagement with your readers – I have a few thoughts of my own here, but the idea is to start simple, noticing some patterns of repeat visits to a site, posts, etc. and then gradually work your way to more tangible results. Different people would attach different value to distinct types of engagement (some more pragmatic business types would try to tie in some dollar figure associated with those interactions, while others would look at the bigger picture and try to associate new relationships that come as a result of that interaction, or new knowledge via a shared article, PPT slide deck, etc.). I am in the latter group but there could be other possibilities as well – let’s try to leave this canvas for now and see what other colors other readers might add to it…

http://friendfeed.com/sherylbreuker/64b345c9/value-in-social-media-isn-t-roi-qoe-stardust

This is a conversation I really hope to see people get into. You talk about engagement all the time, but I find most people don’t understand that their focus on measuring some idea of “return” devalues their very presence. In some ways I think it ties back to authenticity. If someone is in social media for ROI, our hackles raise and we recognize their unauthenticity. Conversely we sense genuine engagement and place higher value on those bringing that to the conversation.