Here is an article (The Biggest Lie in Social Media Marketing) from Mark Schaefer on measuring ROI for social media marketing. Mark definitely makes some good points, which are applicable to certain types of businesses:
“When you ask businesses why they are participating in social media, what do they say? If they say, “to make money,” then they will fail, because currency in the social web is found in both relationships and content.”
While this article is interesting (and true) it doesn’t tell the whole story. Social media IS about relationships, but real estate agents and brokers CAN still measure ROI from their social media efforts. You do so by measuring the number of clients that find you through your blog and other online interactions, and then calculating the additional revenue earned from those clients.
This is how Suzy Trotta was able to calculate her ROI for the last 7 months of 2008 and was pleasantly surprised to find that ROI contributed to over 40% of her total revenue for the year!
Understand that “social media” means something different to each person, to each industry. In real estate, it’s not only possible to measure ROI from these efforts directly, but we recommend you do it regularly, to ensure your efforts are paying off.
If they’re not, stop on by and let Suzy and the TechShorties team help show you how to get a jump on the competition.
