There's a very interesting study out from the E-Consultancy Group; it reports that 81% of the 400 Companies surveyed are planning on increasing their spending on social media, yet 61% say they are 'poor or very poor' at actually measuring the results. Welcome to the New Money Pit.

These are the folks that advertisers love. They get excited about a new toy, and then start spending money before they figure out if it’s worth it. The survey asked the main reasons for the social media spending, and 74% said it was to increase traffic to their site. Yet they’re not measuring results?

The impact of social media on site traffic is very easy to track and measure as long as you are using the right site analytics and have a logical approach to posting on social networks. Unfortunately, many companies segment off their Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter activity from the rest of the sales and marketing operations. Don’t fall into that trap.

Social network sites are actually showing some signs as a viable sales channel, especially for consumer-oriented goods. However, it’s not a fit for industrial sales and b2b results are mixed. Increasing traffic is only a small piece of the puzzle, increasing sales is the real goal.

Any expansion in social networking needs to have three teams involved; sales operations, marketing/branding, and customer support. Each group has something to gain (or lose) by any investment in any of the social network systems.

What’s more important is that your social strategy is integrated with your go-to-market plan for the other sales channels online, including your direct site, E-Tailers, referral systems, knowledge sites, and b2b/supply chain (see Case Study snapshot on the right). So before you approve that all day tweet-a-thon, make sure you’re setup properly to track the results. The web has an amazing amount of data that can help improve any operations; make sure you’re using it. Learn more about our services today.