12 Apr The Search For ROI In Social Media

Marketers are continuing to tackle the tough question of Social Media ROI.

A recent E-Marketer blog gives some good incite to what marketers are thinking in regards to measuring the success of their social media efforts. As you can probably guess, most are unhappy with the current measuring tool. The problem is that there aren’t sophisticated metrics that can be applied across the board when it comes to social media.

It’s important to remember that different marketing strategies will call for different results when measuring the success of social media. Results will be quantified based on goals. If your goal is drive more traffic to your site, then that is an easily quantified metric, but I would suspect that most businesses want something more than that and I would agree. We can look at web analytics all day long, but can that accurately measure our social impact?

According to the E-marketer blog, most marketers are focusing on website conversions and clicks. I wonder if this is simply due to past reporting habits.

I think that we will eventually strike a balance for measuring the ROI of social media. When marketers find a way to relate social metrics and measurement with sales and leads, we will start to see efficient ways to measure investment return.

For example, social media outlets should absolutely be included in property traffic reports in relation to potential leads. I think this is how real estate based companies can effectively gauge the metrics. At the end of the month, your traffic reports should be able to give you some solid numbers in relation to web analytics and social media activity. This involves a lot of cross-examination between reports, which a lot of companies aren’t going to do. I am pretty confident that this industry will find a way to syndicate this process. It’s too important to businesses for it not to.