Most companies these days do social media today (In a recent survey, nearly 72% of marketers say they use social media – see survey below). Now, don’t get me wrong, I know the tangible benefits that social media brings to a company, but not having clear goals before engaging in social media nor having an accurate way to measure it is probably one of the main reasons for companies to abandon social media when they find “it’s not working”!

Companies don’t know how to measure social media ROI

But, I digress… What got me thinking was a recent survey conducted by KingFish media, by interviewing “457 respondents primarily split between corporate management and marketing/sales management”. There were quite a few interesting facts that the survey unearthed, but nearly half of them (43% of marketers – see graph below) haven’t measured ROI being the most concerning.

I couldn’t agree more with social media marketer, Olivier Blanchard, who said in a recent post:

The chatter around social-media ROI is as strong as ever for two reasons: The first is simply because ROI [points to] one of the most important questions an organization can ask before green-lighting a social-media program: I could spend this budget somewhere else — Why should I spend it on social media? Before any other questions can be asked, you have to start with “why.

But is this what companies are doing? More after the jump.

So, what are companies using social media for?

As expected, companies and marketers use social media (loosely defined) for two things: Sales (get leads and manage accounts) and Branding (everything else falls under this bucket). I was surprised that PR wasn’t explicitly mentioned under qualitative metrics though both PR and customer service objectives were mentioned under the quantitative metrics (see #21) section.

But what do they measure…?

Sales (easily the most straight forward goal) has 3 metrics around it being tracked (leads generated, new customer conversions, and increase in average order size) while most of the remaining metrics tracked are around branding. Some of the metrics are around PR (mainstream media mentions), SEO (search engine rank changes), customer service (customer reviews posted). All three of which are valid social media goals , as I’d pointed out years ago – here).

And, looks like the scariest part is that most companies aren’t even getting to the ROI part until months after instituting a social media program:

Others don’t get around to asking about ROI until 6 to 18 months after a program has begun and budgets need to be reviewed. Trust me, when 10% of your group’s budget is being cut, you start asking hard questions. Social-media programs not clearly in support of specific business objectives had better come up with a good answer when the budget hatchet starts to come down. (via Olivier’s interview on Smartblog on Social Media)

Now, this is definitely NOT a place for your company to be in. The good news is that over 50% of companies (per the survey mentioned above) have clearly defined metrics and ROI. There are also gold-standard companies that are pioneering social media in terms of what it can do for your company and measuring it aggressively. Stay tuned for clear examples on how companies are using social media within the organization on this blog.

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Your company must be using social media (looks like most companies are). What does your company primarily use it for?