Return on Influence

We did not invent the term “Return On Influence” (ROI). We first heard it said by Michael Goeghegan during a panel discussion at the Corporate Podcasting Summit USA, June 2006. The concept resonated with us and we decided that it needed to be explored and understood.

We are offering the following as initial points of discussion:

• ROI recognizes the potential of any channel and the communities that adopt it. In the context of social media, including podcasting, producers and consumers share the potential. That is to say, producers and consumers can both influence and be influenced by the communities in which they participate.

• ROI is a change in mindset. It subscribes to new-age thinking about personal and corporate brands. It abandons the measurement of success based on quantifiable financial metrics and relies on a number of key elements to derive success from influence – no matter how the individual or corporation measures success.

• Podcasting – like other social media – is a channel, if only the latest. It is a powerful channel precisely because it defies power. Social media are not owned or controlled like traditional media so they are harder to subvert and have fewer gatekeepers. The influence of an individual participating in that channel is not a function of wealth or celebrity; influence is a function of the individual’s, or organization’s, “social currency” – their credibility and contribution in the community of ideas. You cannot port social currency like cash and spend it liberally to buy influence elsewhere, nor can you exchange cash for social currency. What happens here stays here, and we don’t need your money. Influence is authentic and cannot be coerced. Return On Influence accrues on the value of contribution.

ReturnOnInfluence.com will be used to explore the elements of this new mindset through a community discussion, case studies, surveys, hypotheses and more discussion.

You are invited to join our community. There are no invalid ideas — be heard, be read, and learn.