Social Media Research Source #3

"Adobe Says Impact of Social Media Undervalued by Nearly 100 603454." eWeek 21 Mar. 2012. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 25 Mar. 2012.

This article was actually really really interesting, and extremely recent given that it was only published less than a week ago. It addresses the question of how companies measure the value of social media in driving website traffic, engagement and revenue.

Adobe recently released findings from its second Adobe Digital Index report (conducted to help give marketing, e-commerce and retail executives critical digital marketing insights into the value of social media) and the results indicated that the impact of social media was being greatly undervalued by nearly 100 percent, based on the model of measurement being used.

Adobe's study evaluated how marketers measure the impact of website traffic from major social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Blogger, YouTube and Yelp. Adobe analyzed more than 1.7 billion visits to more than 225 U.S. companies' websites in the retail, travel and media industries, concluding that marketers significantly underestimate the value of social traffic.

The report then goes on to detail and analyse the two main different models used to measure the social media impact, and makes recommendations between using the two.

If we decided to go with a topic concerning social media in a marketing capacity, this could be one of the key secondary questions that we answer. Rather than simply focusing on how to USE social media channels in marketing, it is also key to know how to MEASURE the success of such strategies. This is an area that is also extremely new and companies are still feeling their way through, because even if they know that they DO need to have a social media strategy, and that it IS helping, few of them know how to correctly measure HOW MUCH of their website traffic/engagement/revenue can be correctly attributed to social media.