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(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.
I agree with you about the need to have an ROI target in mind with social media and but would state in even stronger terms that you did that this shouldn't even be questioned anymore.
Standard marketing metrics lend themselves well to social media. Soical Media should use the standard marketing metrics such as impressions, leads/click through's, and ultimately to purchase. Being able to track a campaign to the point of purchase will get a CFO's attention and prevent them from silently cursing those flakey marketing folks under their breath.
If the goal is to build awareness, impressions work. If the goal is to show that you can call people to action, comments on blogs could work. But ultimately, social media has got to be tied to a purchase for it to really gain traction.
That's also helps avoid conversations like our old school sales guys suggest, like having their kids spam blogs with product promotions.

Good thoughts, Kyle. More and more, we've all got our own brand out there...or not, depending on our participation. Who's going to be trusted by potential employers, clients, and others? I think it's the person who's built themselves out online.

Amen Marsha. AMEN! Work hard to get an identity online and network. network. NETWORK!

Of course, you need to consider ROI whenever you do something that consumes time, energy, resources and people.
If you have no ROI, why bother flushing time, energy, resources and people's efforts down the toilet?

After reading this post, it makes me think : How many journalists are getting story ideas out of twitter?
It would be interesting to see, almost as an instant Profnet.
Stop using your companies pre-printed thank you notes. Hand write a thank you note! Hand writing is much more personal and it shows you care. More...
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