This is Why Social Media Marketers Struggle

I’ve been immersed in the world of social media marketing since the beginning. It was so exciting to be part of those early pioneering days!

It took us years to determine how authentic creativity and real human engagement blended (or didn’t blend) with the stodgy culture of traditional corporate marketing.

It took a lot of patience and experimentation to prove that we fit a marketing department. The biggest question we always faced: “How do you measure the value of this stuff?”

I lost one of my first customers because I couldn’t measure the ROI of a tweet!

We’ve come a long way, and social media marketing has evolved into an independent skill set and budget item. However, according to new research from Sprout Social, we’ve made little progress in terms of measurement and legitimizing our work.

This chart from the report made my head spin:

So 68% of social media marketers define Return on Investment … by engagement???

No wonder some regard the field as fluffy.