I believe you are right, people want more hard numbers to back up the social media marketing avenue... so they can at least feel that the investment turns a tidy ROI.

But I think there is another important part of social media that may often be overlooked and can't as easily be measured.

Social media sites are places where people can vent about good or bad experiences. If a business is not involved in the social media circuits and they aren't tracking what is going on there, then they can easily lose referrals, lose 'prestige' as a business and flat out lose customers all together. If only, because you aren't there to defend yourself or at least build a relationship. Social Media has a huge impact on your PR... which is a big part of Social Media Marketing.

The era we have recently entered is really the newest version of 'Relationship' marketing. 40 or 50 plus years ago, companies were founded on exceptional customer service. It was expected. You went to the gas station and you had full service; check the oil, check the tire pressure, wash the windows, etc. You went to a store or any place else and the customer was king. The phrase, "The customer is always right" was coined during that era.

But that was lost over time and the face of corporations became automated telephones, machine operated service centers, lower wages, high inflation and the need for just making a living. Technology came along to make our lives easier and instead depersonalized most of it. Instead of improving everything, it made it worse; maybe because of greed or the quest for lower costs vs. quality or perhaps a number of other reasons. We someone forgot about the customers.

All of that is changing now though, people want that relationship, they want to feel listened to and respected. They want quality customer service. They are also very impatient and want instant gratification.

So we have an entirely new area of marketing, Relationship marketing and Social Marketing is only one piece of that puzzle.

Sounds to me like you have a whole blog series within just your comments here...a series I would definitely read :-)

i think you're being a little ironic...voicing your opinion about any type of return investment through using a social network... when you are voicing your opiniong in hopes of recieving reponses. funny. but i think it's a great topic.

here's what i think-

advertising has changed from the instant gratification of a "cash register customer" or "deal made and done" (don't look these up because they are just my own anolagies), and has become a "relationship" among the loyalty of a customer and the integrity of the product. now, almost, if you don't have a connection (in the United States, anyway) to your customer online, you are considered "not up with the current". besides, seeing is believing, so if everyone believes something is the way it is....IT IS made so.

and anyway, if you don't believe it worked, just do a little research about how barack obama became president.

Good point about the irony. I should really take the time to at least put out an e-book... but in the meantime, I suppose you'll understand that this is my communication outlet :-)

I definitely believe that social media works in a lot of cases, but I really want to see a full study on at least one concrete example. I mean, I work in social media, so I see the successes everyday, but even I have not yet pulled together those notes, numbers, experiences, etc into a demonstrable story that anyone can read and from which they can discern an argument and method of research... if you see what I'm saying. I know they exist, but I get the feeling that a lot of people want to stop all of the social media preaching that is not backed up by research/fact - and in saying that, I realize there's another irony since I focus on analytics & haven't published any of my work yet ;-)

Thanks for commenting, Keith.

I like it. We need the analytics to measure time spent tweeting, amount of tweets, RT's, DM's, and the ROI's for traffic being sent to a company's website. Then we need the CTR, Conversion and time spent on site stats for each individual coming in from the social media. After we have that we can compare it to the other kinds of web based advertising and put together case studies on small, medium and large companies as well industry specific studies to see which companies get the best response rates.

Eric, It is for just that reason that I decided to log the success of some of Jean Luc David's & I's Bellevue Tweet Ups on my blog. The venue's we have utilized thus far have been exceptionally pleased by the turn outs and revenue generated by the events on what would traditionally be slow nights for them. Bear in mind that this is not a business for Jean Luc and I, we just want to mingle with other Tweeters and support locally owned businesses.

I definitely would love to see the numbers as well. Of course taking into mind what you hinted towards; that the turn out for social media based events will spike for awhile since many companies and individuals alike want to know more about it.

I am sure cases will blossom up as the the sector progresses.

That sounds like a pretty good way to track social media effect. It'd be interesting to see your take on all of the variables once you feel you've pulled together enough data.