Social ROI

Even more than large organisations, small to medium businesses need to be sure that everything they do is likely to return a profit.

That statement may sound simplistic but when it comes to Social Media many businesses have not thought their strategy through from a return on investment perspective or, more importantly, considered how a social networking strategy can negatively impact profits if executed badly or incorrectly. The concept of “if you can’t do it well, don’t do it” is never be more relevant to any business activity than it is to your Social Media strategy. Social marketing does not work like traditional marketing and it shouldn’t be used as such – social media exists on genuine, authentic interactions and when used correctly will support your broader marketing objectives.

Web Force 5 works very hard to help our customers understand the real results that they can expect and to document that expected return on investment (money, time and other resources) so that our customers make an informed business decision as to what is worthwhile and what is not. From that point decisions can be made on how to track that return by considering things such as:

• How to track results
• What tools best suit our measurement objectives
• Frequency of reporting
• Non-social systems that provide measurement data

At the end of the day marketing – traditional or otherwise – is all about results and how these translate to the bottom line. Social Media is no different, it just requires some experience and knowledge to make tracking the results easy and accurate.