Testing ‘n Tracking: How to Measure Social Media ROI for Your Business!

By Social Editors • on August 15, 2009

Mashable — Social media measurement is one of those topics about which everyone has an opinion, but nobody agrees on the solution.

The question about how to measure the return on investment (ROI) for social media participation comes up in every workshop I deliver, as definitive, statistic-based metrics seem to be the primary way communicators feel they can secure approval and budget for these programs from their management teams.

If you’re waiting for someone to provide that magic bean, then put away your watering can. It ain’t gonna happen. That’s one of the reasons why I tend to think that social media (by which I mean actual conversations and relationship building exercises, not widgets and Facebook (facebook) fliers) is more aligned with the goals of a PR program than it is with marketing.

In the absence of any accepted metrics, businesses still need to be able to determine whether or not a social media program is moving the needle, moving product or otherwise making an impact. This largely depends on the company’s social media objectives. Because these dramatically differ based on the organization, it’s impossible to agree upon standards. That doesn’t mean we can’t measure ROI at the company level, though.

With that in mind, here are a few ways to consider measuring social media ROI for your business:

Qualitative

First, determine what you want to measure, whether it’s corporate reputation, conversations or customer relationships. These objectives require a more qualitative measurement approach, so let’s start by asking some questions. For example, if the objective is measure ROI for conversations, we start by benchmarking ourselves with questions like:

– Are we currently part of conversations about our product/industry?

– How are we currently talked about versus our competitors?

Then to measure success, we ask whether we were able to:

– Build better relationships with our key audiences?

– Participate in conversations where we hadn’t previously had a voice?

– Move from a running monologue to a meaningful dialogue with customers?

There are companies that offer services to assist with this kind of measurement, which requires a great deal of human analysis on top of the automated results to appropriately assess the tonality and brand positioning across various social media platforms.

Get The Full Story Here! Enjoy