People in this world will always be reluctant to change or following popular trends. We hear it from many prospects weekly, “I just don’t see how this social media stuff can help my business,” or “Why would I spend money on a trend like social media?”   Social Media is not a trend and will not be going away for long time.  Why not stay ahead of the pack instead of letting the pack leave you behind?

“Do you have the audacity to sit here and think this social stuff is not going to impact your business when this stuff is overthrowing governments that have held regime for 40 years in the Middle East?” – Gary Vaynerchuk , Co-Founder VaynerMedia

Presidents, CEOs, and other executives find it difficult to understand or spend money on something that won’t generate an exact ROI.  They know that costs are involved with implementing a Social Media Strategy (SMS) and they have problems believing that hiring a full time position to handle SMS may be too much.

No company right now can tell you they have an exact amount for their Social Media ROI, however that does not mean that companies can’t track sales increases in relation to certain campaigns, new websites, or new product launches via social media / e-commerce tools.  According to a recent report by Bazaarvoice; 74% of CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) predict they will tie social efforts to hard ROI this year.  In the same study, CMOs said only 40% of them actually achieved tying some percentage of their company revenue back to their social efforts during 2010.

“Sure it’s possible to measure how many new fans, followers, connections, replies, views, and retweets that a company gets on social media a month, but that’s not really measuring ROI since none of those things specifically correlate with the amount of business or dollars that a company gets.  However, just because it’s difficult to measure ROI, that doesn’t mean that social media doesn’t contribute to the bottom line.” - Nick Stamoulis, Founder of Brick Marketing

Social Media has become one of the best ways to find and build relationships with partners, shareholders, prospects, customers, and clients.  The problem with calculating anything financial related to digital business is placing or assigning a sale or loss within the correct area online.  If someone finds your site via Twitter, meets your sales person on LinkedIn, and reads your blog to gain interest on your products, where does the sale get assigned?  The best answer is, “everywhere.”

If you are sharing useful information across many different popular platforms, chances are you are having better luck with sales and can attribute it to your total social media involvement efforts.  Yes, Twitter or Facebook may help more than other sites, but utilizing all of your best tools and finding people on their favorite sites will grow your digital related reach in a heartbeat.

What are some other good issues brought up when trying to sell Social Media to your superiors?