ROI in social media

Is it possible to measure the return on your investment in social media? Yes. Should you be doing this? Yes.

Start with your marketing plan objectives. What is each programme or campaign designed to achieve? How can social media help get you closer to your objectives? What metrics can you use to measure the results of social media initiatives as you implement your programme or campaign?

Counting the number of Facebook fans or blog followers is just one aspect of reckoning results, as ClickZ explains in its post on '7 easy ROI metrics'. I especially like the suggestion to create tracking links using shortened URLs like bit.ly and is.gd for individual social media messages. Then you can count the number of times people click on each link and see how well each draws compared with projected results and previous campaigns.