Do you feel there is room for improvement when measuring the ROI of social network marketing?

Wednesday, August 19 2009 by Craig Nicholson US: Do you feel there is room for improvement when measuring the ROI of social network marketing? Companies are not accurately measuring the return on investment (ROI) of their social media marketing strategies.

This is according to a new poll by MarketingProfs, which found that 70 per cent of firms believe they do do not analyse this aspect of their marketing sufficiently. Not having the necessary resources to do so was identified as the main stumbling block by 39 per cent of respondents, while 25 per cent admitted they do not know what they should be measuring.

Despite these failings, 80 per cent of organisations believe their social networking is either 'somewhat important' or 'important' to their marketing strategy.

"It's clear from these results that few have confidence in their ability to track and measure it from an ROI perspective," chief content officer at MarketingProfs Ann Handley remarked. She added that social media marketing "remains hugely popular" among firms.

Earlier this month, Elemental Communications' Tim Gibbon said that a lot of companies - and in particular web-based retailers - are not convinced about the merits of social media marketing. However, he said that using websites such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook can additional revenue stream if utilised effectively.