Social Media…how to see your ROI?

I know that social media is starting to be seen as a legitimate channel for marketing spend for organisations both large and small, but how do you measure the return on investment?

Well, up until relatively recently social media has been viewed as a long-term brand building exercise in much the same way that mass media advertising has. It’s a vital spend, but very difficult to quantify what the benefit is.

Until now…

There are now a number of social media monitoring platforms which listen to all blogs/platforms and alike, and allow you to look for trends, and see what’s being said. This is very exciting as it means that you can start to monetise and measure your presence in social media, and begin to see some sales return.

The three main areas that this offers benefit in are:

1) research – the opportunity to listen to what people are saying about your products and services WITHOUT having to worry about the effect that asking the questions might have, or whether you’re asking the right questions.

2) competitor analysis – see what the market thinks of what your opposition is doing. Can you learn anything from it, and what’s selling well, what should you avoid doing.

3) sales – people don’t just use social media to tell everyone they’re having a cup of tea! Lots use it to ask for opinions of what they should buy. Simply pass these enquiries to your sales team to close – bingo.

We are about to begin working to BAA at Stansted, and have had an initial look at social media comments, currently running at 3000 per month. This can be an invaluable source of honest and most importantly, current feedback.

The exciting thing about all of this is that you can now place some metrics on your social media exposure.

Enter the dawning of a new age!

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