Screengrab Ecommerce

A new report from Burson-Marsteller http://www.burson-marsteller.com/Default.aspx has brought focus upon some of the benefits that large companies are gaining from engaging in social media. One of the main concerns that top level executives have had with allowing resources to be allocated to social media is it’s difficulty to measure for ROI. Although it is difficult to put a monetary value on the return from social media engagement we can see from this report that this may be due to the intangible nature of the benefits gained. The most fruitful returns for companies from social media listed below are ranked for effectiveness in engaging with stakeholders.

1. Increased brand reputation
2. Increased brand awareness
3. Improved page rank
4. Web traffic increase
5. Generating leads
6. Increase sales

It would in fact be fair to say that the more quantifiable the benefit from social media the lower it’s return. This can be construed in many different ways. Personally I see this as an indication of the casual nature of the medium. Social networking has largely become about business goals and sales as an end result but in order to get there the social aspect must be respected. This can be corroborated by looking at any of the twitter feeds that are only interested in going straight for a sale without interspersing their tweets with personable information or updates on products. These twitter feeds are widely considered against the spirit of the format and not very popular as a result. There are exceptions to this of course such as the Dell twitter feed http://twitter.com/delloutlet which is very upfront about it’s purpose.

There is plenty of information out there about how best to use twitter for business so I’m not going to go there. Social media for business can simply be compared with working the room at a function or seminar, it’s difficult to put a value on it but we know how important it is to get out there!

The original report can be found here: http://www.burson-marsteller.com/Innovation_and_insights/blogs_and_podcasts/BM_Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=160
More analysis at RRW here: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5662/Fortune-100-Giants-Making-Splashes-in-Social-Media.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HubSpot+%28HubSpot%29&utm_content=Netvibes

-- Screengrab ecommerce www.screengrabecommerce.com info@screengrabecommerce.com

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