Even though most businesses are scurrying to create profiles and gain a following on popular social media outlets, a Mzinga and Babson Executive Education survey cites that most business professionals (79 percent of 555 respondents) who are participating in social media aren’t looking into the medium’s ROI. Of course that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about it—who doesn’t care about it? What it does mean is that social media education is lacking. 41 percent of the same survey group reported that they didn’t know if they could measure ROI with the social media tools they were already using.
Before getting into the game, you have to be realistic about what you want to get out of it. If you’re after new business, ask new clients where they learned about you from. If you want to be the source of industry information, analyze your web usage data and see who came in and where they went. If you want to broaden your brand’s reach, check out how many people are fanning or following you. Is the phone ringing more since you started? An increase in web and e-mail traffic maybe? Answers to these questions and a host of other company-specific ones will dictate how much of your company’s resources should be directed toward social media activity.
While everyone in the social media pool may know how to swim, not many people have the techniques of say, Michael Phelps. Unless you’re an iconic brand that can entice fish onto a ship without a net, your business has to roll up those collective sleeves and dive deep into the data to figure out ROI. The process requires time, effort, and the type of dedication that will be tested every time a new SMS comes up.
I’ll say one thing, though. With 55 percent of businesses erecting departments and dedicating new hires devoted to social media initiatives, someone’s sitting on a pot of gold that clearly needs to passed around.
– Natasha Dorsainvil
