Can You Measure Social Media ROI?

There's nothing wrong with trying to quantify the return on any investment, including social media, even if the analysis is relatively difficult to assess. The danger might come from trying to be too quantitative.

For one thing, the measures are proximate, not direct. It would be very difficult, most likely impossible, to quantify the volume or number of sales or revenue that social channels directly convert. We can track web traffic, click through rates, and follower/following ratio. But none of that explains real "influence."

Social media isn't the only channel with those sorts of issues. It is difficult to assess the actual value of trade show events, as well, since "sales" tend to come some time after a contact at a trade show.

The methodological dangers are fairly clear, as well. "If you utilize offline social events as advertising channels, two things happen," argues Joe Hall at Marketing Pilgrim. "You don’t make any friends" and "you don’t create any customers."

"This happens because instead of coming across as the cool girl or guy that everyone wants to do business with, you come across as the annoying jerk passing out postcard adverts."

There will always be management pressure to justify the effectiveness of campaigns and channels. When using social media, the great temptation is to rely on proxy measures too heavily. What you are after is "influence." That can be tough to measure.

Social Media ROI?