This is an interesting discussion. For the association I work for, it's been a challenge to track our ROI for social media. We cross check registrations with Facebook event RSVPs and contact people directly if they haven't actually registered but RSVPd "yes." A lot of our corporate partners are active Twitter users as well. Of course we do our best to create discussion, advertise for our conference, credentialing programs and course offerings. URL shorteners such as bit.ly are pretty helpful in tracking the links we post. Any pointers? Words of advice? Resources we should check into? Thanks!

Hi Laurie -- I don't have the answers or magic bullet here for ROI on social media. If I did, you'd be watching my webinar or something (someday!).

As I am reviewing Engage365 metrics, KPIs and it's impact for Omnipress, it's the question I am looking to answer.

You might want to read this article: ROI: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media
http://bit.ly/9U1LNV It got me thinking beyond twitter to build brand, awareness, etc.

Thanks for the response.

Here's a good video on measuring the ROI of Social Media from David Meerman Scott (at SXSW 2010) author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

I am starting to really agree with this... that there is all this pressure to measure the ROI of social media (twitter, communities, etc), but no one questions me to measure our newsletter campaigns, direct mail efforts or even using Gotomeeting for client meetings.

David views social media as a new form of communication, similar to a telephone or a computer and indicates we don't measure those communication tools.

Check it out.
http://socialmediab2b.com/2010/03/b2b-roi-david-meerman-scott-sxsw