Are you one of the many who wonders what is the ROI of social media?  We get asked this question a lot and it’s hard to answer with a specific number because social media is about building relationships and how do you measure that?

Socialnomics put together an exact video on the ROI of social media.  Erik Qualman of www.socialnomics.net states, “While the video uses familiar nomenclature like ROI, many pieces of social media behave so differently than anything we have ever seen, that I prefer to use ‘What does or will success look like?’ rather than ‘What’s the ROI?’”

In the video, Erik address the important question of why are people trying to measure social media similar to a traditional marketing channel.  Social media is a much more than that; it is the most influential and drastically different marketing channel available to businesses today.

“You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media…The old media paradigm was PAY to play. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to PLAY to play.” – Alex Bogusky, Co-Chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky