Brent MacKinnon's List: ROI

Olivier Blanchard videos

At the root of the confusion between social marketing and social business are two distinct operational world views:

The easiest way to illustrate the problem is – as always – with a silly picture of old white dudes in suits sitting around a table.

Below is the functional view of social media channels as perceived (and expressed) by marketing professionals like John, Nick, Usama and thousands upon thousands of others around the world, including the majority of CMOs:

And it’s easy to see why. If a business is going to put the time, effort, and attention into social media marketing, it would be nice to think we’d actually get some sales out of it.
In other words, we want a return on our investment.
Sonia Simone talked recently with Sean Jackson, Copyblogger Media’s CFO, about the ROI of social media. She expected to hear one answer, but was surprised to get something very different.

Web analytics tools help you track your site’s statistics, which let you see how many people are looking at each page, what sites they came from, and other information to help develop a picture of who your audience is. But which Web analytics tool should you use? Data-tracking needs are similar for all organizations, including nonprofits, libraries, small businesses, and corporations. But given the vast array of analytics tools out there, selecting the right package can be overwhelming.

As part of my on-going work developing social media for business units, I’m often asked about what types of tools I used for tracking all that ‘social media stuff.’

Right now, “the million-dollar question is, how do you figure out return on investment of social media?” says Frank Falcone, co-founder and executive program director of the Centre for CRM Excellence at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.