This year, 81 percent of marketers are expecting social media investments to return revenue, and it seems that CMOs are developing new ways to answer the question of social media ROI. A report from the CMO Club provided to eMarketer reveals that site traffic and the number of social fans will be among the most popular measures of social media success this year.
Site traffic will be the leading measure of social media marketing value in 2011, with 68 percent of CMOs planning to gauge social success this way. Marketers will also be getting more serious about tracking the number of fans and followers their social campaigns accrue, with 62.9 percent of respondents planning to measure their follower bases, up from 59.4 percent in 2010.
Monitoring social mentions and page views will also be big this year. More than half of marketers plan to keep track of positive customer mentions on social media, as well as keep tabs on which social pages get the most visits.
It seems that the majority of marketers expect Facebook campaigns to come out on top. Facebook produces “significant ROI” according to 15.4 percent of marketers, and 32 percent believe it produces “average” to “significant” returns. While company and brand blogs fell a bit behind the leading social network, with just 5.1 percent saying blogs offer significant ROI, a whopping 42.2 percent believe blogs produce measurable return on investment.
With this in mind, brands might consider investing more heavily in blogs this year and tracking blog engagement as a measure of social success. As Brafton has reported, conversational blogs prove to garner the most comments.
