I read a great article from BusinessWeek recently entitled “Beware Social Media Snake Oil.”The article discussed whether or not you can really measure the ROI of social media like you can with traditional PR measures and whether trying out new campaigns through social media is really the right move for your company.
Several interesting issues were brought up, like when you ask an employee to start working on social media- do they spend hours of wasted time because they don’t have any direction for what they are attempting to accomplish? Or, if you go out and spend thousands of dollars buying software systems to measure your success in social media, then no one understands how to use the software - what is the point?
There are plenty of people out their claiming to be "social media experts" that guarantee a social media campaign is going to work for you and then charge a ridiculous amount of money to “consult” you on how to do it. As James Cooper, digital creative director for Saatchi, says, “Anyone who says, ‘This is going to work,’ is either lying or deranged.” While social media may have worked extremely well for some companies, like Starbucks, Dell and Ford Motor Company, it has been very unsuccessful for companies like Toyota, with their failed attempt at a “Punk’d” type social media campaign which ended up only gaining them a $10 million lawsuit and a lot of bad publicity.
Also, does every company actually need social media, or do they just want to be involved with the "buzz" word. Take the example offered in the article about a company that was getting funding from the Defense Department and was allocated $4 million for social media. The problem was, the Pentagon is “privacy-obsessed” and it was determined that their suppliers publicizing themselves through Twitter was not the greatest idea. Exactly! Social media doesn’t work for everyone.
Just remember that measuring ROI from social media the same way you measured ROI from traditional PR methods is difficult. A Twittering employee may develop trust and goodwill for your brand as a result of their efforts, but would have trouble putting a hard number on how they are influencing your sales and enhancing your brand. That is why social media is, in essence, its own game. A game that you should get into only after careful research into why you would need it, what you think you can gain from it and who can help you reach those goals.
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