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Marketers and social strategists hope to develop better ways to determine return on investment for social media outreach in 2011.
ROI has always been a big issue, but as more companies plan to increase social media budgets in 2011, it has become a must-have. The Altimeter Group surveyed 140 social media strategists at multinational companies about their plans for 2011. When it came to social media programs, 82% of respondents reported they would be investing in brand monitoring in 2011, while 77% cited staff budgets and 78% training budgets.
Overall, every area of social media strategy will see more participation in 2011 than 2010. As consumers and influencers continue to flock to social media—and social media programs and marketing demand more resources and budgets—demonstrating ROI for those who determine said budgets is key.
And social strategists know it. Creating ROI measurements tops the list of internal social strategy objectives for 2011, with 48.3% of respondents highlighting that goal. Internal education and setting up an organizational model for social strategy are also top priorities.
Additionally, getting buy-in from stakeholders and increasing budget and headcount are also popular objectives, with 32.2% and 24.6% of respondents reporting such goals for 2011, respectively. Determining ways to measure ROI and demonstrating how social media can provide direct value and results will help reach several of these additional objectives.
Looking externally, social strategists also have several popular objectives for 2011, including website integration, developing ongoing dialogue with customers, and listening and learning about customers. As internal strategies for social media outreach become more developed, companies will have the resources and plans in place, and these external goals will also fall into place.
Channels: roi, social media
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Pingback by Tweets that mention Social Media Strategists Look Hard At ROI This Year -- Topsy.com — January 17, 2011 @ 10:38 PM
When it comes to this kind of stuff, it seems like small businesses are way ahead of the large corporations. It's exciting to think that the field is level for companies of all sizes, assuming they have a clever enough campaign.
Comment by Kari D. — January 17, 2011 @ 10:56 PM
There are several ways to track performance and ROI from social media. I come up with custom strategies to track performance and ROI all of the time using basic tools. You would think that large companies could easily implement this stuff but large companies take forever to do anything in house.
Comment by @ProdigalJPV — January 20, 2011 @ 11:08 PM
We cracked the social media ROI nut about a year ago. We have sold our solution to companies like Cisco, Northwestern Mutual and others. Our social media ROI solution takes into account return and investment in dollars (no web metrics in the actual ROI calculations) to produce the social media ROI. You use our tool to estimate and optimize both the social media return and the social media ROI.
To Kari D’s point, we have found that both large and small companies are looking into this but the biggest is from smaller companies, including social media agencies.
Comment by Dag Holmboe — February 1, 2011 @ 1:55 PM