The ROI of Social Media


What’s the return on investment for your social media. It certainly depends upon what you are trying to accomplish with your social media campaign. Are you trying to build community, develop brand recognition or loyalty, drive sales or encourage sharing of your content or ideas? Every approach will require a different strategy…and a different way to gauge response. Read on.

Your Channels

What’s your social media ROI? Defining return on investment in social media is made easier with tools like Google Analytics 5, but the real question is what you are seeking in your social media campaign. Conversion is important but defining what this means when it comes to your particular business become among the most important things you will need to consider. The Unbounce Blog

The question of authenticity. Especially when discussing the brand your business projects, the question of authenticity emerges. What makes social media or the brand we promote with it authentic? And what kind of return on investment do we get for the authenticity we invest? Is there a substantial difference from the return where a company doesn’t invest this? Chris Brogan

Social media investment and the Civil Rights Movement. The word investment when thinking about the Civil Rights movement, and especially its leader, Martin Luther King Jr. takes on a whole new and nobler meaning, but when we think of what authentic business ought to be doing in  relationship with the clients and customers they serve, perhaps it is a better mark for which to strive. Traffika

Facebook

Facebook now friendlier to marketers. Could Facebook’s stance on marketing make the social networking site even friendlier to marketers, including the many small businesses who now rely on Facebook for a huge chunk of their marketing efforts either through direct advertising on the social site or maintaining of a branded page for their businesses? WSJ

How many of your “likes” are really your customers. More an issue with brick and mortar businesses depending on clients and customers from nearby, a recent social marketing study suggests that, on average just 15 percent of the “likes” on most small businesses’ Facebook pages actually reside in the same town. Pretty remarkable if you are depending upon these people as a source of business. The solution? More local focus. WSJ

Your Strategy

Timing is everything. When looking at how to get the most you can from social media, time can become a critical factor. The reason is simple. Timing is everything on a medium that enters your customers’ or clients’ lives on a daily 24 hour basis and knowing the best times to get the most out of your social media efforts is critically important to your success. Search Engine Optimization Journal

Tips on building a friendly community. Whether it’s a paid membership community or a free social media space where anyone can join, it’s important for you to start thinking about your online social efforts in the right way. Social dynamic can be as important as content and creating a welcoming tone is the key to creating a community that rewards your time and effort. Scott Fox

Social Media Trends

Is it too late to get started? Certainly not, says blogger Peter Masters who shares a wonderful infographic on social media adoption and more. Certainly, though social media isn’t a simple cure all or a one size fits all. Take the time to consider the message you wish to send and how that message could be most easily communicated through social media. The Marketing M8 Blog

Are you a content curator? Matt Mansfield explains this great way to think about the content you provider to your visitors in the social media world. Your goal is to bring people back to your social media presence again and again and eventually get them to check your main site with the products and services you offer there. Matt About Business

Conclusion

Social media is not a fad. Be ware of anyone who tells you otherwise. Top sites may come and go but the means by which marketing on the Internet has been transformed is irreversible. To understand how social media can return the investment of time you put in, first ask yourself what would happen if you did nothing. Failing to use one of the most cost-effective forms of business communication on the planet also may have costs. resonance

5 Comments ▼
5 Reactions
  1. Amelia @ International Business

    You actually had me in the first paragraph. It gets me to thinking, “How many marketers or start-ups or business owners out there who don’t have any clue as to why they’re into social media in the first place?” In the end, a lot of them end up wasting a lot of time in methods that actually don’t work for them.

  2. If you end up using the right social media channel, the ROI is great. The problem with businesses today, the jump on all channels which I don’t blame them. Given vast variety of the existing channels to choose and stick with, it’s time for such a hot space to enter into a new category.

    Here is my 2cents on this whole internet -> search Engine -> Social media things and my rational on why there is a need for a portal to provide a quick and intelligent decision for both the consumer and the companies about their online connections. A Platform to Help us to Distinguish Our Quality vs. Quantity Friends, Fans, Followers, and Companies:

    – Early 90s: WWW was born…
    – By mid 90′s: millions of sites popped up on the Web…
    – Mid – late 90s: Yahoo & Google were born to help us to find the right information of the right pages on the Web…
    – Early 2000: Social media was born…
    – Late 2000: Millions of pages created by people, companies, and organizations on all these social media channels.
    – 2011: Deja vu all over again… we are back to early 90’s…
    – 2012 and beyond…the days of just setting up a website or blog to promote yourself, your talent, your business, and your solution offerings AND creating a page for them on Facebook, LinkedIn, are Twitter are O-V-E-R!. Your social media pages and sites should be on a place where the vast number of users and communities can easily find you, learn about you – AND – express their opinion/rate you and your goodies. If you are confident you are selling something awesome, you need the power of the crowd to promote you (and your company) anyway.

    That is exactly why I built Awesomize.me – the portal to all your existing social media channels.

  3. I think of social media marketing the way I would a radio branding campaign. A successful radio branding campaign means, long term, low rotation of meaningful content that engages the right audience – the best way to measure it is to look at the annual growth of the business (and also the annual growth of the online community.) It’s not like a radio CTA campaign where you fire off 100 spots in a day with a stupidly low loss leader, hard sell message and shouty voice – social media is about getting cuddly with the brand.

  4. Since most of the search engine giants are going on with real time search results, the social media updates and bookmarks can help your site rank much better in the search engines