Post by  Guest  Contributor~ Nathan Kievman
CEO, DemingHill
Founder, Linked Strategies (#1 LinkedIn Strategies Group)

In my many conversations on LinkedIn, I recently came across a group post within eMarketing Associations Group on LinkedIn titled “Social Media for Business is Crap.” Amazing post with nearly 3,000 comments at the time of this post.

So this question alluded to ROI directly. This business person and many others haven’t been able to find real world results. So the cry out was for real life results. Here is my response:

Our company, DemingHill, services corporations with their social media needs and we see ROI consistently. I will share some examples below. However, I believe this question is a bit presumptuous, though well done for the mass interaction it’s caused. When you say “Social Media for Business is Crap” I can only assume you mean ROI. If so, I believe the question misses the real potential of social media.

Our largest Fortune clients only care about the ROI as a second or third area of importance (if that high). You see, the most important aspect of social media is relationship building. The number one most important thing to our clients has been building communities of key constituents. This process is not as easy as the market makes it out to be and requires real strategy blended together with an intrinsic knowledge of the social verticals rules & etiquette. ROI is important, but so is customer service, brand monitoring, brand awareness, intellectual property, trademarks, crisis management and many other categories.

Where most Marketers steal the thunder of social media is pushing this ROI issue. No doubt it matters, I definitely focus on it, but the real fact of the matter is, if you are not converting outside of social media, social media will not help you convert and improve your ROI. Social Media will bring people (at times in masses) to your virtual doorstep. Sometimes they can be more ready to buy over others depending on how they came to your virtual doorstep, but that comes down to strategy, positioning, and influence.

So regarding ROI:
First what is the measurement for success? Like I said before, is it community members of key constituents or dollars in your pocket from sales?

ROI on Social Media is almost always indirect in my opinion. We have ran many campaigns to know this to be true. Here are some successful ROI examples I can share to hopefully shatter your notion that “Social Media for Business is Crap.” I believe and know Social Media is the evolution of human behaviour, and when human behavior changes, so must BUSINESS. Here are some concrete examples of successful ROI driven results:

~ One of our sales guys at DemingHIll (my Corporate Social Media Consulting Practice) closed a $7million dollar deal originated from Twitter.

~ A client attracted Walmart, Human Health, and Bank of America as consulting clients through LinkedIn

~ Small client set up and established $27,000 in revenue on 7 hours of invested time

~ Consulting firm grew a group from 0 to 8,500 members in 11days

~ Client with product and training program has generated directly from LinkedIn over $250,000 in revenue from his efforts on this site

~ Business Services firm generated $150,000 in revenue from webinar series launched through social media platforms only (by the way, that was in one month)

You get the idea. The ROI question is really about your marketing path and product path outside of the social platforms. Those paths can be fixed, but need to take into consideration the original source of the incoming traffic and what motivates them to buy or take a specific action.

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