How do you measure social media's ROI (as a marketing strategy/tactic?)

I came upon this article via Google Alerts:

http://lcolm.net/2009/08/02/zocalo-group-unveils-digital-footprint-index-to-help-brands-better-understand-measure-and-accelerate-earned-social-media-engagement/

A Chicago-based agency has created a process for measuring the effectiveness of social media as a marketing strategy and tactic. It's called the DFI - Digital Footprint Index. Here's an excerpt:

Unlike other social media measurement tools that focus only on quantity and sentiment, the DFI, developed in conjunction with the Department of Marketing at DePaul University’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, is a multi-dimensional measurement methodology that makes it easy for marketers to:

— Pinpoint where and how consumers engage and interact with the brand;— Identify the social media channels consumers use to interact with the brand;
— Determine how well consumers understand and share the brand’s message;
— Gauge the impact social media marketing efforts have on the growth ofearned conversation;— Understand how a brand compares to key competitors using social media;and,
— Track progress over time.

A brand’s DFI is a single benchmark score that is tracked over time to measure the effectiveness of a brand’s social media efforts, as well as its success relative to competitors. The Index measures three dimensions of a brand’s earned online presence:

— Height: the quantity of conversation and content about a brand acrossall social media channels, including blogs, forums, social networks,microblogs, picture sharing sites, video sharing sites, document sharingsites and bookmarking sites
— Width: the level of consumer engagement, interaction and sharing acrossall channels
— Depth: the level of message saturation and sentiment/tone

I'll let you decide if this jives with your vision for measuring social media. FYI there are other, easy, quantitative metrics to use in evaluating the impact of social media marketing.

Examples and Suggestions:

• Number of Facebook “Friends” created before and after a given marketing campaign
• Number of Twitter “Followers” created before and after a given marketing campaign
• Number of LinkedIn Connections created before and after a given marketing campaign
• Event Attendance by Source Type (RSVPs from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Page Traffic for Microsites/Splash Pages created for social media driven campaign
• Donations raised via social media driven campaigns (for nonprofits, cause marketing)
• Number of surveys taken by Facebook users on your profile/event/cause page(s)
• Results of surveys taken by Facebook users on your profile/event/cause page(s)
• Number of petitions created by your Facebook profile/event/cause page(s)
• Number of petition signatures captured by your Facebook profile/event/cause page(s)
• Etc. (Literally - there are certainly other program-specific ways to track social media ROI!)

Reemember - send questions to marketingdrivethru@gmail.com. We're here to help (and we're not the government!)