What’s my ROI? A plan for social media.

I've talked a lot in this blog space about why you should use social media for your company and your clients. But in these tough economic times, there is some resistance, especially by those who want to know what their Return On Investment (ROI) will be. It's a quesiton that's hard to answer directly. I've read a lot and seen a lot of research on ways to look at ROI for socail media. And we've seen recently, in the case of Motrin, where ignoring social media can be dangerous, but also paying too much attention to blogs and twitter can also have adverse affects. Basically, a web ad/video they ran irked a small but vocal group within the mommy blog sector and a Twitter storm followed. They ended up pulling the ad and appologizing.To get full details about what happened, read this Advertising Age article.

But back to social media ROI. Of all the things I read and researched, a blog entry by Beth Harte called "Want to Figure Out Your Social Meda ROI? Consider a Plan." really spells it out about the best. Ms. Harte talks about how SM fits into our toolbox as marketers and how we have trouble figuring out how to use it, because all the rest of the tools are so worn and familar. And this is something new. She goes on to talk about the return, the investment and finally a plan, including goals and objectives for using SM. She gives tactics and measurement advice that fits the medium. If you're at all interested in how to use social media from an analytical point of view, you will find Ms. Harte's post and the feedback from her readers very enlightening. Happy reading.

Mike McClure, Executive Creative Director and SM fan.