Happy Friday! As you’re gearing up for your weekend, we’ve compiled a few stand-out blog posts we found interesting this week for your reading pleasure. Social media marketing ROI has been a hot topic for a while, but you can never diminish its importance. In a world where more and more businesses want to jump on the ol’ social media bandwagon, goals, measurement and ROI should be the driving forces behind any social media marketing campaign or program.
- Making the Case for Real ROI in Social Marketing from ClickZ – “engagement” is not the same as ROI, and Dave Evans of Social Dynamyx offers ways of linking social marketing to customer service processes to measure “real” ROI.
- HOW TO: Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign from Mashable – this presents a somewhat oversimplified process for calculating social media ROI, but at least provides a good, workable foundation.
- Social Media Reality Check: 10 Things to Keep Top-of-Mind – Mitch’s latest for Social Media Today is a checklist of fundamentals to consider before launching into social media.
- The Current State of Social Networks [Infographic] from Social Media Today – interesting infographic that covers some relatively unknown social networks, especially given recent data released by LinkedIn about how social networking-savvy men and women are.
- Women Still Don’t ‘Get’ LinkedIn, Says LinkedIn from The Atlantic Wire – and here’s a link to that recent data!
- How to Hire for Social Media Management from Social Fishing – Maddie Grant of Social Fish has officially called BS on not hiring interns to look after social media. Even though we’ve seen several cases of what can happen when an untrained intern is let loose to handle an organization’s social media presence, Maddie makes a substantial case.