Although ROI is a very good measure for social media activity because it allows a ready comparison for all other types of media, it can sometimes be difficult to use if there are no sales or tracking.

A good alternative is the Social Equivalent Advertising Value (SEAV).

This is where you calculate how much you would have needed to spend to generate the result if you were paying for advertising such as display. Put simply, it is the value of the social activity measured in the savings from advertising.

For example: If 200 clicks to your website would cost £10/click in display and you managed to get 200 clicks from your social media activity for free.

The SEAV = number of website clicks x cost per click from traditional advertising = an SEAV of £2,000.

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Join the discussion

Discuss what you think are the downsides to using ROI to measure social media success. Compare your understanding of ROI to SEAV: which do you think is more valuable and which calculation do you feel would be more enlightening for a social media campaign? Write your ideas in the comments below.

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