Tom Pick Aptly Gathers Ammo for the Great Social Media ROI Debate

There's a great blog post I saw today that happens to refer to my past piece, "'What's the ROI of Social Media?' is the Wrong Question."

Check out Tom Pick's great approach to the The Social Media ROI Debate found on his blog Webbiquity and on Social Media Today. (I really enjoy following them on Facebook!)

Tom shares his own worthy perspective and then links to several resources either in favor of or supporting measuring ROI "of social media" in general, several who say it's not necessary or even impossible (where I stand with regard to a TOOL, yet ROI for an initiative can be), and a few in the "maybe" camp.

All the links he references (have looked at several so far) appear to be great reads (and I'm very honored to be included among them).

Where do you stand on the ROI discussion?

 

Comments

[Melinda Guillemette]

Michelle -
The talk about ROI on social media sounds exactly like talk we've been engaging in forever on professional services marketing as a whole.

Seems to me that any tactic undertaken without a strategy behind it -- even if it's a measurable tactic -- is going to be less successful than those undertaken with forethought.

You're completely right when you imply that social media are just arrows in a quiver, some of which will be more quantifiable than others. Just like marketing as a whole. Best to avoid "ready, fire, aim".

[Michelle Golden]

It is the eternal question, isn't it? You probably often see what I do... that the problem with the demand for ROI measurements in firms is twofold: 1) it's usually an afterthought when people become frustrated with time/money spent and wonder when or if they'll ever see a return, and 2) the common mistake of not having obtained baseline measures (e.g., today's revenue by sector) and set specific objectives (e.g. desired addt'l revenue by sector) at the start.

[Barry]

Michelle - This is great information. Thanks for passing it along.

[Michelle Golden]

Thank you, Barry, it's my pleasure. Thanks for sharing with your colleagues. :)