Content Marketing Today

Why Your Small Business Needs to Measure Its Return on Social Media Investments

Be very specific about what tangible benefits you intend to derive from your efforts.

It seems as though every kind of organization from multinational to small business to nonprofit are beginning to believe that social media should be an important component of their marketing programs. In our own Southwest Florida community, this is clear from the organic growth of the social media coffee sessions organized by a savvy local marketer, Cyndee Woolley.

The perceived importance of social media marketing has grown with astonishing speed even compared to the relatively rapid growth of the business Web. If you think back just 10 years, relatively few small organizations took the Web very seriously. If they had a website, it was probably pretty basic brochureware that did very little more than an actual brochure would have done.

By contrast, within just a few years, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter now represent the concept of social media marketing for small organizations–even if they’re not very sure whether and how to use either one of them.

What I found encouraging from this morning’s session is that a variety of owners, marketing folks, and nonprofit executives are determined to figure out exactly how to put social media to work. In particular, they are very much engaged in how to determine the ROI on their investment of time and money.

Small organizations cannot waste time or money. Social media marketing must prove itself with measurable returns.

Michele Harrison, a local realtor at John R. Wood, noted that she is so time constrained that she cannot afford to waste energy on anything that does not deliver a measurable return.  Naturally, she wonders how much time she should devote to her website, a blog, and now Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Since Michele, like all realtors, is effectively in business for herself, she absolutely needs to know that she will receive a measurable return on time and money spent on social media marketing.

This applies to companies of every size. In fact, Jason Breed, Senior Director, Social Media Expertise at social networking powerhouse, Neighborhood America, stressed that his company requires that any social media efforts pay off in one of 3 fundamental ways:

1. It must increase revenues.
2. It must reduce costs.
3. It must increase stakeholder/shareholder value.

Social media marketing is working in measurable ways for local organizations

Impressively, not only Neighborhood America but a number of attendees indicated that they are already seeing tangible returns from their social media efforts. Here are some examples from very different organizations:

Neighborhood America has used internal wikis, for example, to reduce training time by 1-2 weeks. Jason Breed has personally nailed down critical appointments with senior executive prospects via social media. These are C-level types who would have been virtually unreachable with analog methodology.

Matt Hudson, who is a Florida State Representative from Collier County, uses Facebook to communicate with his constituents, to keep them current on his activities, and to get them to attend events that he is holding or participating in. All of this is possible at no cost compared to the significant expense of old-fashioned direct mailing efforts that were a staple of politics past.

Toby Buerger, Business Development Officer at TIB bank, communicates with customers and prospects at LinkedIn. She can do this without requiring any investment from her bank, but within the respected business networking environment of LinkedIn. Thus, she can share articles from her brand-new blog or invite us to a TIB bank barbecue–right from LinkedIn. We also learn a lot about her active involvement in the Southwest Florida community which illustrates that she cares about much more than just selling bank services. 

Marian Dolan, Founding Artistic Director of The Choir Project in Naples, has been able to reach out around the world to gather musical scores for choral works that would have been impossible to find and to assemble without the Web and the social media connections it empowers.

The bottom line: social media marketing may seem trendy, but it’s not a fad. However, to make it work, you must set out clear goals that are designed a tangible ROI. Done right, social media marketing enables small organizations to accomplish more for less within the digital universe than they could ever have done within the analog world.

Click here to see more articles on social media.