Marketing Science

What is the ROI (define) for social media? It’s zero. That’s because there’s no such thing as “social media.”

People’s conversations are not media; they can’t be purchased as such by advertisers. In other words, people don’t talk whenever advertisers want them to and they won’t say whatever advertisers tell them to — so it isn’t “media” like TV, print, and radio.

If you treat people’s conversations as media, you’d be doing it wrong. Social marketing done right means asking for and respecting people’s conversations and giving them a public place to talk so others can hear. If the advertiser’s product is already great, much of the conversation will be positive. But even if it isn’t the advertiser will have the benefit of free “product research” because people will give them ideas for improvement. 

Untargetables are hard to reach. Unreachables are not reachable by traditional advertising media or channels. 

read more about the ROI of social media on ClickZ … http://www.clickz.com/3633341

check this
http://twitturly.com/

tracks the most tweeted URLs
nifty and awesome

page 1 of 11.4 million results

awareness – reach and frequency – impressions

consideration/trial – pageviews on site, unique visitors

social marketing – social intensity, the quantity and frequency of social actions related to the brand ( that relate to business objectives )

social networks – the places where people go online to socialize

social actions – the act of socializing on social networks

social intensity – the frequency and quantity of social actions; this can/should be a new KPI (key performance indicator) for marketers to assess whether digital marketing efforts are working and yielding positive results against business objectives