Social ROI - Interesting Juxtaposition

Serendipity or procrastination . . . after finishing my post on the cluetrain my trusty feed reader delivers The ROI of Blogging and Social Media. Absolutely point-on. The first question I get whenever I discuss social media with potential customers is ROI. In fact, a potential partner is giving a webcast on measuring WOM (word-of-mouth for the acronym-challenged) later this week - and I am now going to be watching with a slightly different point of view. Thanks for the reminders!

SEO 2.0 (2008):

Social media are virtual spaces where you do not meet real friends, you do not meet anybody in the sense of actually meeting them, but you contact people you would have otherwise never “met”. Can you measure the ROI of that, or do you really want to measure it all? This is also one of the most important differences between a social media campaign and a social media strategy. In a campaign you measure $ while devising a strategy you set other, more important goals that are not measurable by such simple metrics like ROI but may pay out in manifold ways.

Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

86. When we’re not busy being your “target market,” many of us are your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar web site. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing’s job.

I guess the better question is - what is the ROI of “I told you so?”