There are a lot of discussions today about the ROI of social media. In the article “Reality Check: Social Media ROI Is Still MIA,” Lulu Phongmany continues the assertion that the ROI question remains unanswered. She states that “[social media] is not yet seeing consistent evidence of significant ROI …” While Phongmany is not along in her thinking, the type of ROI questioning is old school, equivalent to asking you about the ROI on your cell phone.
ROI, return on investment, computations are often purely thought of in terms of dollars returned divided by dollars spent. If is a classical financial analysis that has been employed for hundreds of years. Ask any CFO/CIO about the ROI for their department, sit back, and watch the PowerPoint presentations pop out. Impressive.
However, this old school thinking doesn’t always directly apply to current world problems. Social media, networks, and computing is one type of group based phenomenon (Group Forming Function – GFF) that has a high cultural value but is often undervalued when measured purely with traditional instruments. Take for example the cell phone question, what is the ROI for your cell phone? You certainly know the cost, at it roots it is basically your monthly bill plus the cost of the phone. Now, all you need to do is calculate the return, that is, the value of what you get out of it. Whit both you would be able to compute its ROI. So what is it?
What, you couldn’t compute it? Does this mean it does not have an ROI and therefore is not valuable? Of course not! It only means that the old school financial tools are not sufficient for computing the value of modern day media.
This is where Social Media ROI: Socialnomics is by Socialnomics (author Erik Qualman) comes in. This video showcases several Social Media ROI examples along with other effective Social Media Strategies. Hopefully you it will continue to shed light on this ROI issue.
