Can You Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Marketing?

We are going about the way we measure the return on investment in social media completely backwards. Effective social media measurement should start by turning the traditional ROI approach on its head. That is, instead of emphasizing their own marketing investments and calculating the returns in terms of customer response, managers should begin by considering consumer motivations to use social media and then measure the social media investments customers make as they engage with the marketers brands. Handling the measurements this way makes much more sense. It takes into account not only short term goals such as increasing sales in the next month via a social media marketing campaign, or reducing costs next quarter due to more responsive online support forums, but also the long-term returns of significant corporate investment in social media. The authors show how you can implement this new kind of measurement and point to the benefits of doing so.