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Is it possible to measure ROI in social media?

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Tom

Marketeers and advertisers know the importance of being able to measure RIO in social media. Matt Rhodes wrote two interesting posts about the topic that made me think about this one.
So how do you measure ROI of online communities?
Does Google have the answer to measuring ROI in social media?

In the first post he discusses the difficulty of measuring qualitative data. Finding a way to measure the quality of an online community or the quality of the generated content is a big problem and remained up untill this day still a gutfeeling of social media experts. In the second post he elaborates about the fact that Google has a patent pending that could be the answer to this problem.

The new technology could track not just how many friends you have on Facebook but how many friends your friends have. Well-connected chums make you particularly influential. The tracking system also would follow how frequently people post things on each other’s sites. It could even rate how successful somebody is in getting friends to read a news story or watch a video clip, according to people familiar with the patent filing.

IF it becomes possible to measure all data, I still see two different types of connections and can’t think of a way to compare them properly in a way it becomes clear for a client which online community suits his needs.

Many connections, few topics. This is basically the ‘easiest’ connection to measure. You have one person, talking about few topics in his field of expertise. This means that the message gets spread out to his connections in the same field of expertise. Influence will be great, it’s a close network with strong links and a possible greater inter-referral rate than the next one.
Many connections, many topics. This can’t be easy to measure. You have one person, discussing multiple topics. His network will be greater but will mathematically look like a weaker network with weak links and less referrals (as these are still measured in a quantitative way to define quality). BUT… his network spreads wider than the first one.

How can you compare them so you have one set of data to compare? Without one set I feel it’s impossible to measure ROI. So I’m curious if Google has an answer (and if they’re going to reveal their algorithms)

NOTE: And to be more accurate, you should even be able to add your client’s goals in the equation some way or another.