This year, businesses are expected to bolster their marketing budgets, with a strong focus on online channels such as social media. While a Facebook or Twitter account is free, the investment of time and effort accumulates and may end up costing significant resources.
Still, experts maintain it is a worthy endeavor, but what about the return on investment? How can it be gauged? A recent survey by BazaarVoice and the CMO Club found 35 percent of marketing officers engaged in social media do not know what the ROI is for their social media efforts.
But the notorious difficulties facing small firms active on Facebook or Twitter has been answered by a number of services such as Klout, PeerIndex, Twitalyzer and Crowdbooster.
"Many of them function similarly, at least at first: After plugging in your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles, sophisticated algorithms compute your company's data and visualize the results in pie graphs, scatter plots, flow charts, or even a simple two- or three-digit number," writes Dave Smith for Inc. magazine.
Some of these sites even offer specific recommendations for prime hours to engage consumers, Smith adds.
So social media is here to stay, and with an improving economy heralding a more competitive business environment, small firms should make sure their campaigns are as effective as possible.
