Measuring the Business Impact of Social Media

Social media is no longer a stop-and-go investment, but rather a long term strategic channel that, when integrated with other marketing efforts, allows brands to connect with users over time. Results of a recent survey conducted by Wildfire find social media efforts valuable in their ability to grow brand awareness and increase dialogue with customers. In addition to spending more time thinking about how to engage audiences, marketers will soon begin to measure social media's impact on the business through a more traditional ROI definition: attributable sales and costs.

In November 2011, Wildfire conducted an ROI survey of over 700 marketers from all around the World. The results were compiled into an easy-to-digest infographic, found below.

What do you think of the results? Where does your brand fall in line with these alignments?

 

Follow Maya Grinberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/papayamaya

Comments

[UberdanSounds]

06:29 PM on 01/25/2012

I think what's great is you see big companies using Social Media not only to engage but to deliver customer service. This allows them to streamline & keep on eye on what their customers are saying about them. Then, if there's an issue, they can correct it faster than before. It's basically FREE market research, & companies always paid big $$ for that stuff! See Gary Vaynerchuk, Zappos, etc.

[dtallwalk]

11:33 AM on 01/23/2012

marketing efforts...... brands to connect with users over time....... Business Impact of media
All this is code for we want to and will in time load your social web page with so many pop-up and video adds it will take you half the day to sort through just to get to the point that you can read your page. This reminds me of Cable TV they said no commercials. You can watch your show with no adds. Well we all know how that worked out. A 60 min show with 25 min of adds
Is this the future of the web we will see.

[Maya Grinberg]

01:09 PM on 01/27/2012

dtall-- I hope not! I think what the newest versions of popular social networks tell us is that the users experience is very important. And so if the users complain, or actually do leave the platform (versus you can't really leave your cable provider, if he's the only one in town and you want cable) results tend to happen.

[Paul Robert Edwards]

02:51 PM on 01/21/2012

Maya, I quite agree with you about social media being a long-term investment. I've been involved since 1981 before it was called social media. Thanks for posting this.

[Maya Grinberg]

01:10 PM on 01/27/2012

Thanks Paul! What were you doing since 1981? Communities?