(hat tip to 123 Social Media for the posed question)
There is endless talk online and off-line of increased traffic to websites, comments galore, users joining your community, and community development. The question posed through all of this discussion is the concept of measuring ROI in Social Media.
Having an arm of our company, Brandswag, be a social media strategy and marketing division it is constantly on our minds. How do you take those GREAT campaigns and measure ROI? It is pretty simple. The majority of social media marketing is brand development driven. Of course, you have the companies like Compendium Blogware that measures organic search and leads through their proprietary software which caters to a form of ROI.
When thinking of ROI in social media it is all dependent on your campaign. If you are using Facebook for donations, writing a blog as a small business, or using LinkedIN for networking purposes it is important to figure out goals before hand.
If you want to build brand name recognition in a specific geographic location you are looking at a brand development focus. It is extremely intangible. Success is measured over a length of time and that is hard to pinpoint.
Social Media is amazing for brand development. Hands down one of the best tools you could use to further your name in a community.
Use the tool for what it’s worth. It is extremely possible to start mixing social media marketing into your traditional marketing campaigns and further the power of your marketing arm.
The success comes in the little things…that leads to the HUGE things.
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I enjoyed reading this blog and agree that social media marketing is great for brand development.
Like all forms of marketing SMM has advantages and disadvantages so the key to using it successfully is to start out with clearly defined goals and some basic systems of measurement and tracking
I often have to rescue people who seems to drift off in the SMM cyber space and spend many work hours with little to show at the end.
I track ROI on SMO, SEO, SEM, PR and other branding related activities. All business strategies should be trackable & measurable to show results. These results provide key information for business decisions. This is not impossible or unrealistic for any business.
@Joe you are measuring social media marketing based off of time involved, community building, and brand name recognition? I am not saying it is impossible for businesses to do it is just a hard thing to manage.
I think ROI is measured differently depending on what side of the table you are sitting on. Those who funded Twitter, LinkedIN, Facebook, etc. need ROI based on dollars coming in. They put real dollars in to create social media, and they need, and deserve, real money coming out. If you are a marketing person, then ROI comes from brand, website traffic (anyone remember website traffic as an ROI in 1998…look what happened when there was no business model attached), then social media can provide the necessary ROI. If you are in sales and advertising, click-thru’s, sales per click, etc. matter when you are measuring ROI.
Ultimately ROI, ROE always matter in any investment…it just depends on who’s looking at the numbers to find out whether or not social media provides adequate ROI for the investment made.
I believe there are several types of campaigns that brands can run/develop on social media. Surely it is hard to measure roi on brand…but I believe that brand should only be one component. Social media sites can be very targeted online focus groups to listen, converse and engage prospects or customers. Social media sites can also be highly targeted places to seek “trial” use of products and services. Social media sites can also be an invaluable feedback loop over a customer lifetime. Social media sites can also serve as an effective vehicle to track/understand how consumers use competitive products. This is the hope of Facebook and Twitter. This is the reality on targeted social media sites like Photo.Net, DavesGarden.com, Craftster.Org and how we work with brands. It is very powerful and it is very cool.
I believe there are several types of campaigns that brands can run/develop on social media. Surely it is hard to measure roi on brand…but I believe that brand should only be one component. Social media sites can be very targeted online focus groups to listen, converse and engage prospects or customers. Social media sites can also be highly targeted places to seek “trial” use of products and services. Social media sites can also be an invaluable feedback loop over a customer lifetime. Social media sites can also serve as an effective vehicle to track/understand how consumers use competitive products. This is the hope of Facebook and Twitter. This is the reality on targeted social media sites like Photo.Net, DavesGarden.com, Craftster.Org and how we work with brands. In these cases branding is one component and ROI is much more easily measured. It is very powerful and it is very cool.
Great post Kyle. I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. Tracking ROI is very important, especially in the current economic climate. But, just like brand awareness adds on TV, Radio or in Print, tracking a specific ROI for some forms of social media isn’t always easy. If your organization’s main goal is to track ROI of every project, you might not see the dollar for dollar return on some forms of social media.
[...] development. Hands down one of the best tools you could use to further your name in a community.Kyle Lacy, Social Media – Indianapolis, Jan [...]
Thank you for the mention Kyle. One thing to keep in mind that these are not mutually exclusive strategies right?
Just because one is using social media and measuring traffic increases, click through rated or conversions for ROI doesn’t mean that they are not also getting all of the softer benefits of brand that you are describing.
One of the things I love about measuring traffic increases from organic search is that I know that my branding efforts are growing too. In Q4 we doubled the number of blogs in our system and quintupled our traffic. That’s 5 times the number of people who had a positive impression of our company.
Thanks again for a thought provoking post.
[...] Should We Even Consider ROI in Social Media? (kylelacy.com) [...]
[...] Should We Even Consider ROI in Social Media? [...]
[...] development. Hands down one of the best tools you could use to further your name in a community.Kyle Lacy, Social Media – Indianapolis, Jan [...]