ROI OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Marketers today repeatedly validate and measure their investment in social media, and more often they are knocked with the topic on ROI (return on investment) on their initiative. Gauging financial metrics has been ephemeral. To appropriately evaluate the impact of their social media marketing investments, interactive marketers must ally their objectives, metrics, targets, and strategies across four perspectives — the financial perspective, the digital perspective, the brand perspective, and the risk management perspective.

While browsing I was stuck by this fascinating report from Forrester titled “The ROI Of Social Media Marketing” published as on July 16, 2010 that emphasized on ‘Balanced Social Media Marketing Scorecard’ – It notes “The best way to measure the impact of social media, as with other diverse efforts in the organization, is through a wide range of metrics that are both directly and indirectly financial. A balanced social media marketing scorecard will consider and monitor effects across four perspectives that balance the short term and long term and the directly financial with indirectly financial outcomes:

1. Financial. Has revenue or profit increased or costs decreased?
2. Digital. Has the company enhanced its owned and earned digital assets?
3. Brand. Have consumer attitudes about the brand improved?
4. Risk Management. Is the organization better prepared to note and respond to attacks or problems that affect reputation?

Balanced Scorecards aren’t just a measurement process. When thoroughly defined as a part of the objective-setting process, a Balanced Scorecard can help to align measurement to all corporate objectives, not just sales; enhance the strategic development process; build consensus; and avoid short-term gains coming at the expense of long-term brand health.”

Other elements for social media campaign monitoring have been an extensive usage of analytics tools. There are plenty to choose from depending on needs, strategy, and budget. One of the widely used free tools is Google Analytics that will give plenty of different graphs. Besides we can use few of the following applications in the calculation:

• Buzz Logic – It provides information about popular social media activities that can help the ending profit if, advertisements are made there.
• Buddy Media Platform – This tool helps businesses as well as marketing companies to evaluate how they are helping revenues through social media activities.
• Brands Eye – This tool is specialized in monitoring online repute of your business.
• Collective Intellect – It provides useful information about opinion of consumers to the marketing experts. It collects and shares the information in an efficient manner.
• Redian 6 – This tool is ruling the social media monitoring market. You can easily communicate with your global customers and measure your success there.