Planner Reads

This post is guest-written by Ashley Moreno, Business Analyst at Bazaarvoice.

Proven ROI sets social commerce apart from social media. Unlike social media, social commerce explicitly ties together a company’s online, community-based activities with the bottom line. From a financial standpoint, it’s easy to see the benefits of social commerce over plain social media. Putting it into practice, however, can prove more challenging. If your company currently struggles to prove ROI on its community-based, online programs, then know: you’re not alone.

In his blog last month, Avinash Kaushik outlined the 11 barriers to online measurement, which he took from Econsultancy’s recent Online Measurement and Strategy Report. Turns out, most companies struggle with measuring the effects of their online efforts due to a lack of strategy, too few resources, isolation within their organizations, an absence of upper-level buy-in, and an overall lack of understanding. That’s probably not news. We hear about these challenges all the time. What was surprising was that just 9% of companies say they struggle with poor technology, and only 12% reported they struggle with staffing. This supports an insight Jeremiah Owyang published in Forrester’s blog back in June:

“Successful social media marketing is 80% strategy and ...