Our friend Heidi Tobias at Constant Contact shared some interesting statistics earlier today:

Evangelists in social media spend 13% more and refer business worth 45% what they spend. flpbd.it/tLkm Make the investment. #smb

— htoby (@htoby) January 16, 2012

Not long afterward, we came across this terrific blog post and video from Brian Solis:

Yet despite the increasingly obvious positive (and negative) impacts that ‘Social’ is having on our businesses, we continue to hear many claiming that the impact of Social ‘can’t be measured’.

Wrong.

It may not be easy, but it’s increasingly necessary. There simply isn’t an option to ignore it anymore.

Quoting Brian:

What the social media gurus aren’t telling you is that the landscape for business isn’t changing because of social media, it’s changing because consumer expectations are evolving.

Your customers are empowered through technology where social media becomes only part of the disruption.

Your job in 2012 is to not embrace new technology with arms wide open, but instead understand it and learn which disruptive technologies separate you from existing and potential customers.

Exactly right.

Our Focus Social CMO Roundtable on Wednesday will be specifically focused on the metrics being used by leading CMO’s to measure – and manage – their Social initiatives in light of the tremendous changes we are all facing. There’s already an online discussion going around this topic – which will be continued live.

I hope you can join us – and hope that you are able to respond to the ’seminal changes’ we are all facing in 2012 in a positive, constructive, and measured manner.

Tags: Brian Solis, measurement, ROI, Social

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2012 at 10:49 AM by cselland and is filed under Focus Roundtable Discussions, Focus.com, Social CRM, Social Media Metrics, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.