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

Many clients have asked about social media benchmarks or social marketing benchmarks. They ask things like how many fans should they have on Facebook? They are concerned if they cannot project 1 million fans on their fan page.

But that is because most clients are coming from a reach and frequency background. Some have moved to unique visitors, pageviews, and time on site. But what is more important today is not that people get to the site or the time they spend, but what they do … so social intensity is a benchmark which captures the quantity and frequency of social actions like sharing, discussing, commenting, voting, etc. All of these actions lead to value that accumulates for other future visitors to the site.

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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

social networks – the places people go to socialize like Facebook, MySpace, etc.

social actions – the things people do when they are on social networks

social marketing – the act of stimulating more social actions that yield awareness, purchase, and advocacy/loyalty for brand advertisers

social media – it’s NOT media, so stop using the word media! (see Social Networks Aren’t Media – http://www.clickz.com/3631391 )