"What will be my ROI?" .. says the Partner.

Is it safe to say that the question about ROI and measurement of social media is a hot topic within most companies and organizations? I can say yes, on behalf of my law firm. Every time I come back from a seminar on the benefits and success of social media, I am always hit with the question of "Well, what will be our ROI and how soon will we see the difference it is making". Luckily for us, there are many free social media tools out there that can answer some of these questions.

 

In no particular order .. let's start with Google Analytics. I must admit, I am addicted to all Google products. I have probably tried every single one of their inventions. Even the one where you call a toll free number if you are looking for a restaurant or store, and it will patch you through directly. How cool is that? Regarding Google Analytics, I have used this tool at work before, to track our site and newsletter traffic. Like all Google products it is very easy to use. Some of its features include, tracking sales and conversions, measuring site engagement against predefined thresholds, tracking email campaigns, banner ads, offline ads and the ability to trace transactions to campaigns and keywords.

 

Another free tool that many of you have probably heard of and used is bit.ly. This is a super-simple, must have tool for anyone that is managing a social media account online (this can be your personal or your firm's account). Bit.ly is a universal url shortener that not only provides a handy service in shortening urls but also allows you to access analytics to see how many people are clicking on your link.

 

Lastly (for the free tools), there is Social Mention. Social Mention is ranked by many social media bloggers as one of the top free social web measurement tools. It is basically a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the web into a single stream of information. It allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web's social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. What amazes me about Social Mention is how quick the searching was. I typed in my firm name, and within 15 seconds  it pulled up a very extensive report of where we were "mentioned". Wow!

 

Now onto the companies and people who can afford a paid tool. I was approached a couple months ago, via a cold call by a vendor called Meltwater. This was their pitch ...

 

"The Meltwater Platform provides the foundation for the rest of our services. The search “agents” will be configured based on my needs-analysis with the key decision makers at your organization. The fundamental value of Meltwater News is derived from our ability to pinpoint and deliver the information that is most critical to the needs of your managers and thus to the success of your company."

 

Now, just by reading that I was not so impressed, because Google Alerts can basically pull up the same information. However, when I digged further into their company, I found a product line called Meltwater Buzz.  Meltwater Buzz is a social media monitoring platform that helps you mine conversations across social channels for nuggets of insight. Some of its features include:

• Searches through over 200 million sources
• Insight into underlying themes, sentiment, influencers and more
• Actionable information from analytics—not just numbers
• Collaboration tools for company-wide campaign management
• Personal support from our Social Advisors

So to conclude, the free measurement tools are great if you are starting up and just getting a feel for the social media space, but in order to be able to properly analyze the data and make sense of it all I think the capabilities of a paid service is the way to go. Just look at what Sysomos could do! 

Now let's all JUMP ON IT!