Investigating ROI of Social Media Marketing

This 2011 - BA hon ( 2.1 / 68% UK Grade accredited ) Investigation Dissertation has 117 pages on a subject area I passionately worked within whilst writing and continue to work within.

Investigating ROI of Social Media Marketing

"The application of ROI to social media has been a subject under great scrutiny and questioning in terms of accuracy and measuring against the realistic objectives companies have put in place for using social media. Companies are trying to understand the capabilities of social media and what return can be given form placing marketing budget on such a channel. There is an abundance of resources for the social media ROI and results were obtained from many perspectives to provide a better understanding of the application of such traditional methods of marketing into new media programs. The variations of understanding, methods and application of ROI to social media suggest provide a gap of research on the subject to provide all still learning about a channel in its infancy and further knowledge towards creating a more concise, accurate and mutually defined process. The areas in question are provided as themes and research is obtained to draw conclusions and provide better understanding to the matter for the researcher and readers of such a study.
The areas in question include “What is Marketing ROI” to get a full understanding of the exact traditional meanings associated with marketing ROI before its application to social media. Thereafter is the research provided on the questioning of what “Social media ROI” can be defined as. “The process of Social media ROI” investigates the resources interpretation, methods and understanding with regards to the application of ROI into a social media program, the full program integration within an entire company and the objectives in place for company growth and cost reductions. “Camps of Marketers” is a theme deduced in order to define which camps or categories of marketers that existed with regards to social media ROI and whether they thought it necessary, were completely dedicated on measuring success or not, in order to get an understanding of why certain companies the process works and others it does not. “Top channels and uses of social media” were to show the importance and impact of which channels were seen as the most effective in terms of results and long term value for a company’s growth and cost reductions. “What they were tracking” is a theme to see what accurate metrics were considered or had any influence on what company’s see as the ROI indicators of social media when related to financials and the value placed on these methods of measurement. “What does a fan cost?” was put in place to define how far company were willing to go to get more accurate ROI calculations, whether they considered or researched costs of acquiring fans, value of fans and used them in their ROI calculations. “Engagement” is a popular theme and many resources and research showed engagement as a non-financial metric still was considered as an attribute to the ROI of social media and the two areas of financial and non-financial should not be separated in the process. This area shows just how important engagement is to obtaining and defining social media effectiveness. “Social media ROI limitations” as most areas of business practice show certain limitations in application. The variation in opinions, methods and total understanding has shown independent limitations to applying traditional ROI techniques and calculations to social media yet in general do not deny the fact that it is important to relate activities of social media to business value.

Although themed, questioned and discussed separately the study should on a whole show a better interrelated understanding and investigation into “The ROI of Social media marketing.”