ROI on Social Media

I read an interesting post at entrepreneur.com by Carol Tice on ROI on social media. It made the point that she has not found any or many business owners that have found a useful way of turning social media into business they can take to the bank.

It is the same sort of thing I remember people saying about the web in general in 1995 when I started my dating site, which is now making TCMS over $400 million a year in revenue. I guess what I hear, is "I don't know how to do this, so it must not be worth while."

The good part of the article is the basic question, "Is what I'm doing working?" You should always ask yourself this about any given activity. Then if the answer is no, the next question is "Is it working for anyone else?" If the answer is yes, then you should ask, "What technique are they using that is making them successful?"

I will admit at this point, I have no idea how to make the social media thing work. If anyone has read a great book or two, let me know in the comments.

I am using the strategy that has worked in the past for me. I am ordering any book written on the subject and saturating myself on the topic. Today I read through The Secret Power of Blogging and learned about 15 things that will help me learn how to get the word out about this blog.

I have decided it doesn't do any good to write good articles if no one knows about it. I haven't even gotten started on Twitter, Facebook, etc. I feel that it all probably works together when you are doing it right.

When I see phenomenally successful people like Tim O'Reilly and Seth Goodin using these tools, I realize that I'm just not getting it yet, but it will be worth working on.