Recently, I participated in a discussion about the ROI of social media. Print industry audiences are always looking for examples. One printer recently told me that he gained two to three new contacts that resulted in sales by using LinkedIn. Calculating the ROI and linking it back to new revenue is a challenge. Most evidence in our industry to date is anecdotal so far. You cannot measure what you do not track. The first item to start tracking is your time on social media. Can you translate your time in hours per day or week? So if someone gets two or ten new customers, what were the other expenses associated with the total customer acquisition? Also what is the value of the spend for the first job and potential for other jobs. Obviously there are many questions to answer the cost of a social media campaign.
The link http://prnt.in/Zwc discusses the ROI such as staff costs, advertising, external fees and the “other” category to estimate, tracking, technical or creative costs. The article is very discouraging.
The suggested salary of the needed positions to carry out a campaign was also listed such as the social media strategist at 52K, community manager at 95.6K etc. The article lists various benefits for social marketing such as customer engagement, direct customer communication, instant feedback, low cost, brand building etc.
Since I could not really relate to the total cost of a social media campaign (212K) in my non-profit-association world, the benefits and the campaign were of more relevance to me. It was fascinating that just over half the respondents to a mentioned survey cited the “low cost” as a benefit. The respondents, like me, have not calculated the details if the results mentioned in the link above are accurate. Really, 212K? OK if you are a Fortune 1000 company, this figure is reasonable but for me? I am still calculating how much time I spend on social media and the benefits I see. What do you think?