What works and what doesn't work in social media is still undiscovered territory, IMHO. I've got B2B clients I unequivocally recommend it to, but not as a surefire sales driver — as a way to create a more intimate dialogue with customers and channels, with long-term value that's not necessarily immediate in payback. It's not uncommon to find they've got a rather unfocused and haphazard understanding of the nature of social media, of the diversity and range of options it offers, of the true planning and discipline it requires, and the results they should aim for. It's just like any other channel: there's no panacea here, just another tool you need to grasp and deploy appropriately.

You so need to check our new app Campalyst – yes, measuring social media results is still a surprisingly uncharted territory and thinking in terms of ROI is rare despite all the social analytics tools available.

Hmm … I implemented Social Media Marketing technologies on one site only and got good effect. Maybe it happened because of clear b2c environment of the site, but still it can't be 1%.

One thing to note – unless people have their links tagged properly and analytics set up right, a lot of social media traffic will end up being counted as direct traffic – since so many people access these sites from mobile devices or third-party apps. So the 1% of traffic coming from a social media url doesn't tell the whole story of traffic resulting from social media, in most cases.

well, we made campaign on FB and result was zero. Hard to beat

An what sort of business it was ?

Get ready for the tsunami of negative stories on social media. Ciara's piece is a small hole in the social media dam that is about to burstOur experience has been that while social media *can* work in some instances, there is very little that is project-able from one effort to the next. To my mind that means that for every star struck raving article we read about SM success, there are 10 failures nobody is ever going to write about. Get ready for some carnage. There cannot possibly be enough room in the market for the dozens of platforms that purport to manage and track social media. It may well turn out that like virtually everything else that comes along in the Web space touted as the next great thing (remember push technology, widgets, everybody do a blog?) that social media is just one more added element of complexity to the marketing mix that will work better in some categories than others and will be like general advertising very much dependent on the quality of the ideas behind each effort.While you cannot ignore the vast numbers of people participating in social media, those numbers by themselves mean that SM is a marketing pancea. It's just one more thing to figure out.

Very simple, it comes down to BELIEVE and READINESS, it does what it says on the can. if you use it only for social interaction, you will have a good time doing so. . . if you use it to engage your customers you will have a good time going so as well. . .it is wholly up to individual interpretations.But for it is one of the greatest tools ever present since time was invented.

I think that we will start seeing more stories like this but the real issue is that most companies think that all they need to do is setup a Facebook page and then they are done – they link their Facebook page to their Blog and also Twitter. Next step is push, push, push – social media is about being “social” and interacting, most companies see it as just another place to post press releases or sales & promos. I know this from experience, that is what I thought (luckily I saw the light about a year ago and it has changed everything)

I rarely see the connection explained between “social interacting” and sales, which is where the money is. I see a lot of companies jumping into social media as a “marketing tool”, ads looking for workers proficient in social media, but very little in the way of clearly delineated, tracked, PROFITABLE results. Still waiting for someone to connect the dots. Until then, appears like so much sound and fury, signifying….(nothing)

Thought-provoking comments everyone. Thanks for the feedback.

Many companies invest huge capital on Social Media marketing like facebook advertising or Google Adwords.Social media marketing is very effective for few websites not all websites.

Social media only works best for those companies which know what their objective is. Unknowingly jumping into Social media waters by just copying others who are doing it successfully is nothing but a mere mistake.

Of course. As SM grows, the tools are refined and the wheel continues to reinvent itself.

Yes it will Do the work and impressive out class other services as wll

100% working.if some one know about the company Vision then its social media working

[...] else can the numbers tell us? According to research by ForeSee Results, fewer than one percent of website visits come directly from social networking sites. Compare this to email marketing, which influences 32 [...]