TWEETING PAYS OFF

By K.C. Bishoppe

More and more companies are striving to learn how to measure the actual value of social media tools. Most agree that social media technologies have viable business benefits but it's still difficult to calculate the actual ROI numbers.

Many businesses learned years ago that a brief, interesting video on YouTube could bring customers to their business. The marketing opportunities found on YouTube are phenomenal. And, the cost of doing such a video and posting it is relatively small.

With the popularity of Twitter businesses can send out a tweet internally to communicate with employees and externally to communicate with customers regarding sales, locations, special appearances and other items of interest.

In addition, by posting information on Facebook andn MySpace an even a larger customer base can be attracted.

The result of using social media for disseminating information is frequently a large cash revenue for a relatively small expenditure.

With the addition of a special url to the social media site, companies can also track the number of people who are following them via social media.

The difficult part is getting from activity measurements to actual value. Measuring value is extremely difficult.

One of the ways to accomplish the value measurement is by comparing the amount of time and money spent pre- and post - introduction of social media.

Calculation of social media expenditures is going to become increasingly important as companies invest more money in social media. Accurate figures are going to be necessary to justify the cost of social media.

Some companies have experienced increased customers and revenues through social media. Now those companies are asking is social media better than email and phone calls for communicating with customers and is it a less costly channel?

Only by quantifying social media figures can a company decide if it pays to develop proprietary systems that meet a firm's security standards for sensitive data of a financial and corporate nature.