The Social Media MBA Guide to ROI: How to Measure and Improve Your Return on Investment

1Strategy

Learning Objective

In this chapter I will equip you with the arguments to allow you to have a discussion with senior leaders about why and how social media and measuring it, is a requirement and not an optional extra.

This is a chapter for those of you that have to work with non-believers. If you can't convince someone that your organization should be engaging with social media there is no point in starting the conversation about ROI. If your organization is all over social media you can skip ahead to the next chapter.

Is Social Media for Us?

You can't secure buy-in before you know the timing is right. Before you embark on your social media journey, you must start by taking a good look in the mirror and asking yourself if social media really is one for your company?

There are authors of books such as this that argue that social media is a must for every business. “If you're not on the bandwagon now, you're too late for the party!” I agree that social media is a must for every business, but only when the time is right for that particular business. The recruitment industry was early on the ball using social media for business gains, a few years later the property industry caught on but the automotive industry is still notoriously behind.

As a mentor at the tech start-up accelerator Oxygen, based at Google Campus in London, I had the privilege of getting to know the founders of a company called Carhoots.com. Today they have more followers on Pinterest then any car brand ...