How do you measure ROI of relationships?

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to how I use social media personally and for my own workplace. I'll admit I love connecting with people and connecting people with other like-minded individuals. It's been my calling pretty much since birth and with today's social technology I find they are an extension of what I love to do.

At work I have used Linkedin and Twitter to connect with our faculty, staff, students and alumni, and also to facilitate conversations and collaborations with community partners. The best part about being on Twitter is being able to comment on and re-tweet (see "share") information that you think your network would be interested in. Social media is all about the reciprocity, if someone in your network has shared your work with others, say thanks.


Lately I'm a little disillusioned with how reciprocity has been actually working within our larger parent organization. I'm talking everything from being left out of tweets when our researchers are featured with their new discoveries to no acknowledgement when we recognize other researchers. We've been told to follow some basic criteria when posting to social media, and that should ensure pick-up and shares amongst other faculties. It saddens me to say that it isn't quite the truth.


As always I bounced this blog post off of @marynedwards and as we talked it through she said the way people and organizations behave on social media these days is not unlike the group projects that we used to have to do at MRU! There's always that one person that takes the reins, often ignoring the contributions of others on the project (thanks for the insight as always Maryn). 


Instead of letting this phase me I have come to realize that the community where we are physically located in is much smaller than the virtual community that we've been building. For each snub from the folks back at home, we get three new follows and multiple shares from the relationships we've built externally. So where is the value really? The value is everywhere, as long as both sides can see it. I still find value talking about my organization online each and every day, and others must think so too, our engagement is ongoing and ever-growing. I hope that eventually those within our own community might see some value in who we are and what we're doing and invite us to the table instead of ignoring us.