"What's my return on investment?"
This is a question we know all too well at Firebelly. We like to compare it to the ROI of a your mother because it's almost impossible to put a value on everything she has done for you throughout your life. But, that's another blog post.
This infographic from MDG Advertising does an excellent job depicting the ROI of social media and outlining a new way of thinking for businesses. It explains how companies are looking beyond sales and dollar signs, and looking at metrics like site traffic, conversion, number of positive mentions, etc. It also shows that companies are increasing social media plans and budgets. The difficultly with ROI is that there is no standard measurement, so it's important to identify your objective(s) before diving in and re-evaluating those objectives based on results.