PRBreakfastClub

I struggle with ROI in the social sphere, as I’ve talked about before. Google has taken a huge step forward this week in measuring the ROI of social media, as it announced the first concrete effort at valuing efforts in this arena. The three main reasons Google made this change (from the Analytics blog):

• “Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions
• Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs

I’ll let you read through the post itself to familiarize yourself. Never before has anyone tried to tie real, tangible, financial results to likes, follows, comments, posts, and so on and so forth. We know the value of social media. It’s networking, listening, identifying new customers, etc. Selling it to the C-Suite can be difficult as the bottom line is the only number they are concerned about. This provides a tool that provides realistic numbers as to conversions, and where those conversions are coming from.

This is not a be-all-end-all tool, but it certainly is a step in the right direction.

• 6 May 2013 : Knowing Your Audience: How PR Agencies Need to be Careful Choosing Customers
• 30 April 2013 : Get Geoff Livingston’s Welcome to the Fifth Estate Free
• 19 April 2013 : Auto-tweets, Kawasaki and Takedowns: The Ugly Side of Social
• 15 April 2013 : 2013: The Year that Social Media Will Run out of Kool-Aid
• 8 April 2013 : Top 5 Tips for Adapting a Relationship Marketing Model

Share on Tumblr