Morpheus Media provides help for a reader looking to justify social media marketing buys.

Question:
I'm hoping you can help us find experts who can share ROI models for social media. I need a model or formula to help justify the costs of social media marketing. Beyond Forrester's article on the ROI of blogging, we need to measure the ROI for such things as online communities (private and public), participation in YouTube, Facebook and MySpace pages (not advertising on these pages/sites).

Answer:
Thanks for the question. This is an issue many marketers are struggling with as they begin to test the social networking waters.

I reached out to Adam Broitman, director of emerging and creative strategy at Morpheus Media. Having developed a system for measuring the ROI of social media called Morpheus Media's Social Media Scorecard, Broitman has the expertise to help you through this issue.

"At the risk of sounding overly pedantic, one must first define ROI," Broitman says. "While direct marketers are looking for site traffic, leads and sales, brand marketers may have a harder time quantifying ROI. This difficulty in quantifying ROI for brand marketers is certainly not unique, and ROI is presented in any number of ways on agency spreadsheets across the world. With the onslaught of video and rich media, engagement has become a metric of choice to prove ROI, but engagement does not always solve this quandary when referring to social networks. So what do we do?"

Broitman says that at Morpheus, they have two ways of calculating ROI to justify the use of social media platforms.

The first is pretty obvious: How has site traffic changed and are the social platforms you are working with entering your list of top referring domains?

The second way, he admits, is much more intriguing: "Every social property has its own inputs and outputs. Comments, diggs, stumbles, friends, video views, tags (and the list goes on and on) are all ways that users interact with each other (and brands) on social networks. Each input and output signifies some intent to interact (either with a friend, or with a brand). Each interaction point needs to be scrutinized in a different way, as each carries a different meaning and potential impact. 

"For example, 'Stumbling' a piece of content on StumbleUpon takes little time or effort. Writing a brief synopsis on the piece of content you just 'stumbled' on takes a little more effort and shows true user interest. If I were to grade the actions on a scale of one to five, one being the least prescient and five being the most, the first action would be a one, while the second would be a three."

If neither of these two actions are a five than what is?

Broitman explains: "A five on the social media scorecard is the seldom-achieved holy grail of social media that only Steve Jobs and team receive on a regular basis. Scoring a five means harboring true brand advocates that work with you to market your brand. That being said, there is still hope for the rest of us mortals."

What's the first step?

"Start a Facebook group or page," Broitman says. "Reach out to people in your target demographic in an honest voice and see how they respond. Seed the community with topics that are relevant to your brand. If you are able to spark interest and get a conversation going on your home turf, you are doing pretty well, and every once in a while people will acknowledge that this conversation was brought to them by 'brand X.' Maybe they will make a favorable comment about your brand's ability to be a part of the community. One favorable comment from a consumer is more impactful in my eyes than having William Shatner tout your brand in a 30-second spot to millions upon millions of people, but that is just my opinion, and my clients don't seem to mind!"

As Broitman explains, the beauty of all this is that you don't have to spend a lot of money to get started, and if one technique is not working, it can be changed just as easily as it was created.

His best advice: "Stop worrying about metrics before the fact and jump in head first. The metrics will surface."

If anyone else has thoughts on the topic, please add them to comments below.

And, send me your questions -- yours might get featured in the next Dear Dawn!

Dawn Anfuso is senior editor, iMedia Connection. Read full bio.