Thinking about Social Media’s value while hearing Susan Boyle’s video had been viewed 33 Million Times in the last month, or so, but producers and advertisers connected with the show she appeared in, in the UK, hadn’t made any money on all those views (as reported by the NY Post via NY1 Cable channel). I’m on my iPhone as I pen these thoughts and can’t put in my links here due to the iPhone’s current limitations.

I’m going to argue about the accuracy and narrowness of that viewpoint; I don’t think the value of Social Media Outreach is connected to ROI; I think Social Media’s value is much more intimately connected with a potential customer’s future propensity to purchase or interact than any “direct” monetization of a campaign.

That would make Social Media ROI kinda difficult to measure. Search Marketing was much easier to measure because it is similar to direct marketing, works with an identified need or pain point, and is fairly easy to track by site Analytics along with the information provided directly from the search engines (now, for Paid AND Organic).

Social Media doesn’t have a direct response connection, but it has several indirect connections.

I believe the reason we can’t easily determine the effectiveness of Social Media … We’re asking the wrong questions.