powering Australia's discovery of the third place

In the Social Media Business Benchmarking study we commissioned with Nielsen, it was found that a significant percentage of Australian businesses didn’t feel as though they knew exactly what to do when it came to social media. It seems as though perceptions of lack of knowledge and expertise are barriers for business investment.

One of the biggest barriers of investing in social media besides expertise is that 28 percent of organisations think it’s difficult to measure the ROI. No one wants to jump into something and feel uncomfortable with or have questions about, or not know how to report on the reports to management. Many organisations also expressed they don’t understand which KPI’s to look out for.  In other words, “How do we know this is working for us?” “What can we measure?”

It’s not surprising that that there is still some uncertainty as to how best to measure ROI from social media activities. Like any new media it takes time for the industry to wash through metrics and agree on frameworks. But one thing’s for certain – as it’s the Internet which is the most measurable medium on the planet it’s only a matter of time until industry standards are agreed.

Of both the small and large organisations surveyed, 55 percent believed ROI in social media could be quantified through sales/revenue directly related to the activity. 40 percent felt it was fan/followers number, and 28 percent felt it was in brand movement directly attributed to the activity.

At Community Engine we work with clients to put in place metrics that measure the ROI in terms of increasing revenue, decreasing costs and improving stakeholder satisfaction. This is not about simply marketing metrics such as how many friends, or how many links (although than can be one component of the overall mix).  It’s much more than that. This is true business ROI and we’re seeing it delivered everyday from our platform. The true value of what we provide to our clients is a strategic business asset in the form of proprietary social networks.

Oliver Blanchard’s Presentation below sums up our approach to measuring social media ROI really well:

Without clear goals social media can be intimidating. And without clear goals ROI will be difficult to measure. In our next post, we’re going to address senior management as a barrier and how we can facilitate a conversation with them about social media.

posted by Venessa in the category Reserach & Statistics ROI Social Media Social networking
Tags: nielsen-community engine social media business benchmarking study, oliver blanchard, social media ROI