Investment in social media

ROI refers to the money that a business or a corporation earns as a percentage of the full value of their assets which have been invested. The method to calculate this is:

Return on investment = (Income - Cost) / Cost.^[5]

ROI is the most common profitability ratio that establishes the efficiency of an investment. In this context, ROI will measure the returns from a social media investment. However, it is commonly argued that calculating ROI is difficult and also depends on the applied returns and costs. There is no universal way of measuring the ROI of the social media commitments (Kelly, 2012). As such, some business owners tend to count how many Facebook fans and Twitter followers they have or how many retweets and likes they enjoy.^[6] However, this may not be an effective measure of ROI. We can measure ROI using metric tools that foster conversion measurement and optimized CPM, which enables Facebook ads to reach the target audience (Burg, 2013). This enables the investor to know who clicked through their ads thus enhancing future business planning. In addition, we can measure ROI by analyzing interactions, calculated by multiplying the number of received likes by the number of friends of those likes witnessed the action. This defines how far the advert went; moreover, we can analyze traffic to determine the ROI in social media efforts (Harden & Heyman, 2011). Indeed, different social media understand the business owners need to evaluate their ROI in social media and thus there is a provision for built-in analytics tools for following engagement, likes, and shares (Burg, 2013). This helps the marketers to determine how often people find the marketer's page through the social sites. For example, on Facebook, one can analyze the comment to like a ratio of posts while on Twitter, one can analyze the retweets to tweet ratio. Notably, the higher the ratios, the higher the ROI is.

Summarize Fact Check

Initially, business owners may choose to invest in social media as a means of building their brand recognition. Through social media, businesses can simultaneously draw in new consumers whilst making existing customers more familiar with the brand. For example, through the use of the micro-blogging site Twitter; brands can promote their products with a simple "tweet", and any regular Twitter user could potentially stumble across their products and services via their newsfeed, whilst existing customers may become extra accustomed to the brand after seeing positive responses; following the current consumer's fashions. Companies can effectively use social media to enforce their company history, values and advantages in a way that will appeal to, and attract, many consumers.^[7]

It is statistically proven that businesses who engage in social media experience higher brand loyalty from their customers, hence we've seen not only an increase in investments, but also in the ROI; with over "72% of marketers now using social media to develop loyal fans", and of those who have been engaging in social media platforms for at least 1 year, "69% found it useful for building a loyal fan base".^[8]

Social media can directly lead to an increase in sales and brand awareness, as demonstrated with multiple campaigns in the past. A notable example was the success of the Jimmy Choo (2010) 'CatchAChoo' campaign; with which the internationally acclaimed luxury shoe and accessories brand set out to generate substantial online exposure to promote their new trainer collection, engaging customers through a real-time treasure hunt around London to locate a pair of trainers using the 'Foursquare' network.^[9] This campaign lasted just under 3 weeks, with over 4000 individuals participating and 250 different blogs covering this campaign; with over 4000 mentions of this hunt on Twitter. The results? Trainer sales in Jimmy Choo stores rose by over 33% after coverage from The Evening Standard, furthermore the reputation of the brand; measured by positive mentions of the brand, went up by almost 40% as a result in less than a month.^[10]

Similarly, online fashion store ASOS.com launched another Twitter campaign; using the '#BestNightEver' hashtag. ASOS achieved high levels of customer engagement, in turn driving more than £5m worth of sales and helping the brand register its highest ROI to date in the UK, not to mention the successes it brought in the US, with searches for the ASOS trademark soaring by over 50%.^[11]

Investing in a company's engagement in social media undoubtedly has its benefits. Activity on social networking platforms such as Facebook as an example can lead to increased traffic that the company's website receives via these referrals. A common way to measure website traffic can be done by comparing search engine rankings through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – mentions, sharing and the traffic of websites are positive signals of popularity; stamping the authority of many brand's websites and allowing them to rank highly among their competitors.^[12] Activity on social media almost acts as a signal to search engines of a company's popularity and credibility, with all of this ultimately leads to more sales and increased brand awareness.^[13]