stairway to heaven

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The conversations around social media ROI are getting more and more attention; which is great.  I’m hoping this will be one of the top issues on everyone’s social media agenda for 2010 and beyond; I’m also hoping that all of these people are going to come to me as clients…but that’s another story.

We need to remember something about social media ROI.  Calculating ROI is great and dandy but it’s only a partial solution for a business that is looking to impact the bottom line.  Once you calculate your ROI you want to be able to increase it; or save more money.  This is where other elements of strategy and testing come into play.  We’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on the importance of social media ROI but let’s remember that the only reason ROI is important is because we want to maximize it.  Without context ROI is just a meaningless number and focusing solely on achieving a number without understanding how to impact it is useless.  There is no point in chasing a number unless you understand how to impact that number.

The context behind ROI is what will really tell you what investments are working and which one’s aren’t.  It will also give you insight into where you should be shifting or taking away your marketing dollars. So again, an ROI number is something but an ROI number with context is everything.

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