Measuring the ROI of social media

Like so many small business people these days I suppose, I am getting my feet wet with social media. I have a Facebook account and am getting involved in LinkedIn which I like a lot. That all said, I am not sure it is worth all of the effort. How can I tell? — Jan

 

A: This is such an important question for all sorts of reasons. For one, many people find themselves increasingly spending more and more time on Facebook and the like for personal reasons, and as such, for another, it has become the place where people are making business buying decisions. Via social media, they are getting recommendations from friends, seeing targeted ads, and researching businesses they learn of.

So yes, because you need to go to where the eyeballs are, you need to be on social media, but you also have to be equally sure that you are getting a bang for your buck and time.

 

Here's how to tell:

1. The bottom line: How do you know if all of your tweeting and updates and blogs and new videos are making a difference? Because you are making more money, that's how.

The real danger with social media as I see it is that it is very easy to get sucked into it, to find yourself spending a lot of time with it because it's fun and engrossing, and then telling yourself that it's necessary. .. when really maybe it's not because it's not paying off financially.