Social Networking And Return On Investment

It's both a strength and a weakness that businesses always seem to need things to be quantifiable. But when this attitude is applied to social networking, it gets a bit tricky. It's admirable and usually necessary to be able to measure a company's business practices and decide if they are bringing in enough money to justify continuing with them. But a social media strategy is very different from previous marketing strategies, so how does one measure the Return on Investment, or ROI?

The problem with asking this question of social media today is that some things in the business world are just not quantifiable or measurable, at least not very easily, and not in the way the bean counters mean. That is, you might be able to attach numbers to certain things in the new social media world, such as how many followers a company gets on Twitter in a two-month period. But whether that can be translated into some sort of social media campaign that allows numbers people to draw any valuable conclusions is another question.

Michael Stelzner, on the Social Media Examiner website, wrote in October of 2009 that trying to measure your Return on Investment depends partly on what your goals are and what types of social networking interactions count as an investment or count as a return on that investment. Certain things, like the results of "wider exposure," are very difficult to measure, and one person who commented on the article doubts that you can really measure the benefits of these social interactions, adding a quote from Einstein: "Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count. Everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."

Big business social media efforts may produce great results, yet never be fully measurable. How does one quantify good will? If customers enjoy their conversations with a company and begin to feel a certain brand loyalty, can the value of that be calculated? Social networking can produce those things and other positive results, without any accountant ever being able to measure them. It may be that businesses will just have to accept that "increased good will and loyalty," even if unquantifiable, are perfectly acceptable returns on their social media investment.

Related topics about social networking
Businesses And Customers Using Social Media For Social Good
Corporations are now developing social media policies that allow them to give their customers what they want, and not just within the narrow confines of their business relationship. Using social media for social good has become something corporations and their customers can do in partnership, as they learn to recognize each other's values. As corporations work for good changes in the world, they can gain the respect of potential customers, and the two parties may discover that their relationship will become profitable in ways they had never imagined before.

The Main Priority In Social Media Marketing
The reason, of course, is the fear of losing control of their own brand. But social media marketing can ultimately be beneficial to the companies that integrate it with all their other marketing strategies. For one thing, customers will feel listened to, especially if they see their genuinely valuable suggestions being taken up by the company.

"Policing" The Social Networks
Developing social networks for corporations and individuals alike has created new problems and challenges for how to manage this burgeoning communication form. One challenge for businesses, which needs to be involved in these networks to converse with customers, is to create social media guidelines so that conversations can proceed without giving away proprietary secrets but also without making customers feel used. For the general public, on the other hand, the big concern is managing their personal data on their own social network.