This social media stuff is a lot of work. And often a lot of work without tangible rewards. So what do we do it all for?

When this question really comes in to focus is when you are trying to justify and show the revenue value of social media. What is the ROI of Facebook activity? Does Twitter generate any sales for a furniture company? How does Google Analytics fall short when trying to set and improve social media metrics?

Over the last several months, I’ve been helping launch a client’s online store, set up agressive Google Adwords accounts and attach goals and conversion metrics to our “activity.” It’s not a straight line with this social stuff. Of course, we never said it was. But sometimes, the results are harder to track than you think, and the ROI from an hour spent “socializing” content is not as clear as an hour adding new products to an online store.

Of course the hardest part is trying to keep up with the changes in Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, while actually building plans and programs to utilize them. The moving parts can get overwhelming. And even for those of us working in the business of social media, the clear goal-to-revenue is often obscured.

So over the last several months, the darkness was merely the result of working the social angle for several other clients. I left nothing on the table to continue my reporting of success or trials and misses. I’m happy to say, a number of energy cycles have been returned to me and I’m gearing up to UBER back. The work is still here, but I’m in the driver’s seat in a few cases and have some time to look up from the multiple dashboards and spreadsheets that hold our treasure maps.

When ROI is the most important driver, how does social media stack up with other promotional activities/tasks?

John McElhenney
@jmacofearth