There is absolutely no denying the fact that today’s dynamic consumer behavior is greatly influenced by what kind of information is posted on the Internet, and more so social media. In effect, it is critical to tap the vast audience base available on the networking sites. This is easier said than done.

Unless a campaign gains a nod of approval from social media users, it will not work. What holds the key is to provide them with proper information, present it in a compelling manner and try to reach out to them. Many companies wrongly assume social Media RoI is not measurable. They are mistaken since it is possible to evaluate the impact of a social media campaign.

There are parameters such as mentions on blogs, feedback on content, reader comments, etc that can be made use of to check the outcome. Click-throughs serve as a reliable yardstick. Another option to estimate the social media impact is real-time blog advertising results.

Importantly, the exercise should be more concerned with knowing whether your target audience is getting drawn to the brand, and gradually becoming aware of it. This happens as the users start to spread a word among their colleagues, family and friends.

You can resort to piece of statistics including the visitors count and engagement metrics for grasping the user sentiments from resources like Google Trends, Google Analytics, Twitter search, BackType, Compete etc. Instead of just laying emphasis on numbers, your idea should be more to leverage word of mouth. This will help you to push a product/ service over time.

Another notion that social media is a cost-free avenue to bombard people with your ads and promotional messages is not wholly correct. In fact, there are many small and medium sized companies now keen to allocate resources to new media initiatives. Constructing a rich, user driven multimedia microsite will serve as a pivotal point around which a targeted online community can rally to air their opinions.

Developing user-friendly applications, inserting widgets can allow you to distribute the content. This is a way of forming a focused group on networking sites like Flickr, Twitter and Facebook to enhance the community participation. There is obviously some initial cost involved to set up the campaign and later managing as well monitoring it.

Advertising in itself is sure cheaper compared to traditional mediums, but it’s the planning of a strategy along with expertise to implement it needs investment. Integrating certain tools into a corporate marketing program needs strategizing and proper management of skill as well as available resources. More complex functions might increase programming and designing costs. Expenses on a comprehensive social media marketing campaign, though not negligible ones, can provide multifold returns in terms of branding and conversion. What matters is the end result…