Ep. 150: Mfon Akpan - Social Media ROI for Finance and Accounting

Contact Mfon Akpan:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mfon-akpan-5702325/


The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Virtual Reality:
https://www.biographbook.com/bookstore/hitchhikers-guide-to-virtual-reality/


TED Talk - "Incorporating virtual reality in the
classroom":
https://www.ted.com/talks/mfon_akpan_incorporating_virtual_reality_in_the_classroom


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
We're so happy you decided to come back and listen to Count Me
In's 150th episode. Welcome to today's conversation. I am your
host, Adam Larson, and the speaker for this milestone episode is
Mfon Akpan, assistant professor of accounting at Methodist
University. Mfon has a passion for emerging technologies and as
an expert in virtual reality technology. He researches new
technologies and educational methods to offer students occurrent
effective and relative teaching experience and his conversation
with my co-host Mitch, Mfon talks about the value of social media
and its accounting implications for accountants and finance
professionals. Stay tuned now and thanks again for listening to
another episode of our series.
 
Mitch: (00:51)
Social media is not something that many, you know, accounting and
finance people probably keep top of mind, but following, you
know, initial conversation here, there are a lot of dots to
connect between social media and accounting. So to kick off our
conversation, can you please explain why is it important for our
accounting and finance listeners to really understand the value
of social media?
 
Mfon: (01:15)
Well, I would say that, well, first of all, that's a great
question, Mitchell, and I would say in one word data and another
word funnels. So when we look at the outage of Facebook and
Instagram, that just happened, there was a huge disruption in
both of those areas, one data, so information, two funnels. So
you have many businesses that use social media to drive traffic,
not only to their websites, but also to their physical locations.
And this was completely disrupted. So, so many of those, those
individuals may say, well, my business doesn't rely on, social
media is not that important. What, when it was gone, many, many
business owners felt the impact of that. And I think it's
important as accountants for us to understand number one, to
advise clients on their situation, but also the environment as a
whole. And we need to also understand where the environment is
going. So, one thing, and we talked about this a bit before the
interview was I found out that Facebook was down because I
started getting text messages from, from companies and place idea
of business with that said, "Hey, come to our website, Facebook
is down, this is a chance for you to check out certain things".
That's how I found out because I was getting text messages from
it. So, you know, understanding how this can impact the flow of
business, I think is very important. And I think the outage of
Facebook for many business owners was a wake up call on its
importance and also the importance of having some type of backup
plan, which translates to a strategy on what to do if it's not
working. And or if that platform that you are on for some reason
is not as popular or as not as, effective.
 
Mitch: (03:32)
Yeah, those are great points. And, you know, we, we talk about
data, obviously, data technology, evolution across accounting and
finance and, you know, social media, it kind of lives on all of
that. So, you know, you don't, like I said, it may not be top of
mind, but through our conversation and considering everything
that happened with Facebook and Instagram and, you know, we're
talking events of the start of October, but, you know, I think
there are, are a lot of other points to connect with our
listeners. And, you know, we also heavily rely on metrics right
in different benchmarks and other data points specifically. So as
far as that goes, what kind of social media metrics, really
affect the accounting and finance team as these, you know, events
trickle down?
 
Mfon: (04:18)
Well, I think it goes back to, as far as social media,
understanding that. So from a, I guess, putting at a very simple
level, understanding the dashboards on the social media platforms
that you're using, that's very important from the side of the
accountant, because if you're going to advise your client, you
need to have some type of understanding of it, what data is there
and what may be relevant to your client. Your client needs to
understand it cause needs to understand who's engaging with their
content. And when we think about social media, it can be broken
down into three areas. So you've got owned, you got paid and
earned. And when you think about your, your own accounts, so what
you're posting, if it's a Instagram, if it's a Facebook or if
it's a Tik Tok understanding, okay, what I post who's looking at
it, who's looking at it. What are their demographics? You know,
are they moving? And you can also look to, to determine where the
traffic is going. Are they coming into the store? If it's a
physical location, are they going to the website? If they do go
to the website, are they buying same thing. If they go into the
physical location, they call that conversions. So understanding
that, and really that, that movement of getting people from that
social media to your website and location, that's, that's a
funnel, what they call a funnel. So understanding that I think is
important on both sides. So from the accountant side to the, to
the, business owner side, the other thing is that what I tell
people is, you know, many people are, are, overwhelmed. They
said, well, this is a lot of stuff to learn. And I say, you know,
you don't have to become an expert at it, but you should be
knowledgeable, particularly if you're, if you're using it for
your business, you're posting it. You may be missing out on
opportunities by understanding that information. And particularly
you need to be knowledgeable if you're doing what's called paid
media, you're paying for advertising. You really need to
understand, are you effectively using your, advertising dollars
on that platform? But if it makes sense.
 
Mitch: (06:46)
I think, you know, for accounting and finance, everybody's
looking to, you know, make sense of the numbers, right. And
quantify things. And obviously everything you're talking about
certainly relates to that. And I think one of the best or most
common, however you want to say it, metrics really is, you know,
that ROI, what is the returns? So when we talk about that, what
is the actual measurement, as far as social media impact, you
know, what are some scenarios where understanding ROI is really
most important for, you know, the business owner, the accounting
function.
 
Mfon: (07:22)
Yeah. It is very important because you want to make sure that
it's specifically would that pay media portion. You want to make
sure that it's, it's being effective. It's being effective.
There's measures, not in the dollar sentence, they call volume
and valence, but you want to make sure that, okay, if I'm
spending a thousand dollars a month, what does that equal in
conversions? What, what is the return for me on that as a
business owner and as an accountant, you want to be able to
understand if these, these campaigns, as they call them are being
a few, if you're advising your customers or your clients to, use
paid media, is it being effective? So you, one of the measures as
the impressions and the, the overall engagement with whatever,
posts, which could lead to further...