Tim’s week in social media

How to calculate the ROI of your social media campaign

Jamie Turner of the 60 Second Marketer has provided detailed guidance for those who want to be able to measure the impact of social media marketing. His post gives a useful starting point for those yet to take steps to measuring campaigns. He also highlights that there is a lot of work to be done by quoting “a recent surveyby Econsultancy found that 47% of the companies it surveyed said they were “not able to measure” their campaigns and that “the jury is still out” on the value gained from their social media investment.”

Turner sets out examples of quantitative, qualitative and ROI metrics and as I do, recommends a blend of the three.

Throwing money at social media because your peers are but without knowing why or being able to demonstrate the value it has added will only lead to scepticism when those who hold the purse strings withdraw budgets as they have seen no return on their investment.

Turner concludes: “the bottom line is that, as business people, we don’t use social media to be social, we use social media to grow our business.”

European Union to tighten data protection laws

The European Union’s data protection laws are to be re-written following complaints that content doesn’t disappear from search results even after being deleted by users. Earlier this week I posted about Facebook storing details of users’ relationships to stop showing pictures of exes through the “photo memories” app. Most of us assume that when we delete content from our profiles that the social networks follow suit. Facebook has been shown to store huge swathes of personal data long after users have removed it.

If this change is implemented the implications will reach far beyond Facebook. Google has been criticised for storing the personal data of many while collecting images for Streetview. Other companies that use data about people’s online habits to target marketing could also be affected.

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