When it comes to results of social media marketing, I find myself agreeing with some of social media’s loudest critics. Valid critics complain that common indicators of social media engagement don’t plainly map to return on investment measurements (ROI). And they’re right.

That’s why I don’t represent Twitter follower counts, for example, as an exclusive indicator of success. It’s not easy to build a quality Twitter presence or blog subscribers or website traffic. These are important “results”. But website traffic and followers are not ROI. I like Olivier Blanchard’s classic methods in The Basics of Social Media ROI where important results like Twitter followers or blog subscribers correlate to actual financial performance.

Legitimate Social Media Marketing ROI

Business results should be measurable. New business relationships, or percentage of website traffic are two areas I watch like a hawk for a client, because that’s where ROI lives. We look at new media metrics in traditional media terms. It’s no less legitimate to consider the number of twitter followers than it is to consider a television program’s Neilsen ratings. But reach and frequency is not ROI either. Like Blanchard lays out, ROI requires comparing pre-social media financial performance baselines with positive results and corollary financial performance.

Stephen Baker’s BusinessWeek Critique is  Illegitimate

That said, mainstream business media’s eagerness to beat up on the social media marketing industry merits its own critique. Consider the fear-mongering this piece in venerable old BusinessWeek: Beware Social Media Snake Oil. One of the most telling paragraphs in this piece is when social media marketing is compared to Enterprise 2.0, a trend in business software that Stephen Baker feels business overbought.

Stephen Baker may be right about Enterprise 2.0 and he may be wrong. Who cares? I don’t understand how the comparison to social media marketing makes any sense. Let’s not confuse the use of Web 2.0 collaborating technologies within an enterprise to modern marketing. Let’s be a little more thoughtful about our logic before we go around using words like “snake oil” at a time when mid-size businesses finally have an opportunity to use democratic technologies and level the marketing playing field. Oh, and let’s not compare the costs and risks associated with implementing enterprise software (seat licenses at tens of thousands) with using Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook as a marketing channel.

BusinessWeek’s bias is particularly striking when Baker cites a tragic social media snafu which happens in traditional media over and over. Remember the poor woman who died of water intoxication after taking part in a radio station’s water drinking contest to win a video game system?  Dumb ideas are dumb ideas on the radio, print and the web!