I have continually said that no marketer should embark on a social media program without a strategy to measure its ROI but sometimes you can get carried away with ROI which leads to analysis paralysis. I read an article this morning on "the ROI of link building". If you have to do an ROI for link building than you have a serious issue with MBA marketers who look for answers for everything in spreadsheets
Whether you are selling something or providing information one of the best things you can do for your visitors is to provide links to other sites. Why? Because people are going to go there anyway so why not help them get to good credible information and cut through the clutter of information ?
While doing some work for a client I recommended that they add links throughout their site including links to competitors sites. Why? Because a click stream analysis showed that their website visitors were going to these sites both before and after reviewing their site. We tested the idea of adding links, including those to competitors sites, and the the click stream analysis indicated that more than 60% of the visitors came back to their site.
Remember we have gone from an era of too little information to an era of way too much information. Sure people are spending more time online using social media but people are also spending more time online trying to get to information they want, information they can understand, information they trust and information that can help them make better decisions.
Help your website visitors get the information they need and want and deep link your site. If you have to do an ROI analysis than I suggest you have much bigger issues at your organization.