5 Social Media ROI myths Busted!

July 7, 2014 - PRLog -- Social Media has brought forth engagement between your brand and your customers like never before but yet again you are worried if your efforts put into it is paying off or is being wasted. Of course, with so many words out there about Social Media ROI, it is definitely hard to decipher what works and what doesnt.

Listing down the 5 myths about Social Media ROI to clear your doubts and help you strategize an efficient Social Media plan:

Social Media ROI cannot be measured:
To beat the devil, lets start with the devil. The big question of Social Media's ROI is measurable or not seems to be scaring quite lot of us. Yes! Social Media ROI can be measured.

You must've noticed that some people come to your business through online referrals or they were led to purchase or engage in your business from social media platforms like Twitter, facebook etc? This is exactly how your ROI can be measured.

There are multiple tools that will help you collect figures and datas on numbers of people who interacted, mentioned your, tagged you, searched for you and more. When you have narrowed down from the tools on how many people are directed to your actual business from which platform, you can easily concentrate your effort on the ones that brings you the most traffic.

Social Media ROI is all about Direct Marketing:
No! Social media is not only about marketing neither is the ROI only concerned with direct sales. Investment doesn't always have to be about getting sales that instant, it is about carefully planning out a research on what sells, what your competitors are excelling at, and what the people want.

You being on Social media will in fact help you analyze so much. You can share insights and collect your own insights as well. It gives you a richer consumer insights. And this in the long run will help you in your sales and marketing.

Along with the stronger and more relevant customer insights, it also increases your customer loyalty.

Customer Service on Social Media has a negative ROI:
So when the rest of the world is talking about you, you want to stay away from Social Media because you think you'd be bombarded with comments and feedbacks you cannot handle?

Quit your worries. The more you freak away from having a friendly customer service online, the lesser your chance of being popular with your customers. Afterall, it is natural that negative comments always accompanies good comments. When you are being criticized in open and you respond to it with a non-confrontational and heartfelt tone, it shows your transparency which customers will ultimately appreciate.

When you have a responsive customer service on social media, your customers will begin to share their experience with their social networks, giving you a better chances of gaining new customers.

Social Media ROI cannot co-relate the progress of business goals & objectives:
You may be surprised to find out how social media metrics will show that you can co-relate your business goals & objectives with that of your social media.

Through Social analytics, it has become extremely easy to evaluate your progress against your business goals & objectives.

So what does this social analytics provide you with? You can easily measure the number of customers or prospects; the no of likes, follows or unfollow, and decide if to retain customers or advocate for more; the total reach- your brand value or engagement with your customers and expand your market accordingly; Page Virality- How many are talking about you and more.

So you compare your brand's goals & objective with the Social media results, then you concentrate on whichever matters the most to you. This way, you can easily work your way through social media and build a great successful base.

Not worth the Investment:
Coming down to the last point but not the least of importance, When you have cleared all your doubts, you must still be thinking if it is really worth the investment: time, money, man power? Of course, it is!

Like we discussed, the better you research on your competitors through your customers, study your customers and what is important to them and try to measure your own strategy, the sweeter will be your ROI. Brands who are on Social media are more likely to be engaged with by customers rather than the ones who are not.

You should not forget that your purchasing audience are your social media audience, and the more time and effort you put into it, the better will be your potential sales and potential referrals.