Is it right to expect a Return on Investment (ROI) from Social Media?

If you ask most people, except those in the social media business, to explain the ROI they have received from using social media, they will either say something like “It’s not about ROI, it’s about building a presence” or “I have no idea”.

If pushed further, both groups may articulate it in terms of the trust and value they are building and say that it’s difficult to work out the ROI on those issues. And if pushed again, they might say that whereas ROI (or ROTE, Return On Their Efforts) would be nice, it’s one of those businesses things that needs to be seen in terms of the cost of not doing it.

I believe that there’s another issue at work here – social media is still a new concept, with much left to discover and to understand; how can you measure something if you don’t fully understand it?

Olivier Blanchard’s Slideshow on ROI is fun, instructive and offers a great attempt at explaining some of the issues involved:

Apologies to anyone who has seen this before but I think it’s a great overview of the subject.

One of the issues I’m grappling with, is how to manage the huge number of contacts generated by building a social media presence as that must be a key part of getting an ROI.

What ROI are you and your customers getting from Social Media?