Measuring your return on investment from social media is not easy or straightforward. But can it be done? Absolutely. Social media return on investment, or ROI, is the results you get from everything you do in social media, ranging from protecting your reputation, building brand awareness and loyalty, retaining and satisfying customers, and directly earning or saving revenue.
Even though social media has been around awhile, ROI is still tough to measure. According to B2B marketing blog Webbiquity, 46% of B2B marketers say they’re not sure whether any social channels have generated revenue for their businesses Only 13% believe they’ve proved the impact quantitatively — though that may be because just 14% tie social media marketing activities to sales levels. While there are some intangibles to consider — for example, it’s difficult to measure goodwill or the impact of word-of-mouth as a result of your efforts — you can and should be putting systems into place to regularly track your return on investment.