ROI of Social Media Still Mystery to Most

The vast majority of professionals questioned in a recent survey say they now use social media, according to an article published on eMarketer.com.

Conducted by enterprise social media software vendor Mzinga and Babson (College) Executive Education, the survey revealed that 86 percent of respondents across a variety of industries report adopting social technologies.

Yet an almost equal percentage (84%) do not attempt to measure the impact, or ROI, of the social media tools they’re using.

Doesn’t make much sense, does it?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the top use of social media (57 percent) among professionals is for marketing, which presumably includes branding.

The researchers defined social media as including blogs, chat, discussion boards, microblogs, podcasts, social networks, video-sharing and wikis.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.