Is Social Media Worth the Hype?

The video below was played yesterday at Shop.org’s annual summit, between keynotes delivered by Terry Lundgren of Macy’s and Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research. It’s a video I’ve seen before – matter of fact a Facebook friend posted it to her newsfeed recently when she got hired in a sales position with a social media consultancy.

Now of course it built some excitement for social media. Just play it and see. The upbeat music, the positive facts about social media usage, and so forth.

The problem is, we’re all missing the boat with social media. And for merchants, social media may not be 100% worth the hype.

Here’s a startling figure from Mulpuru: A ton of merchants are jumping onto the Facebook and Twitter bandwagons, but few know how to drive it.

Even speakers here in Las Vegas on Tuesday couldn’t answer what kind of ROI they get from social media, or reveal stats other than the number of followers or fans they have.

The best we got was Alison Jeske, the director of product management at Drugstore.com. She said the cost to incorporate social media is worth it if they can use it to convert one unhappy customer.

Maybe Tracy Benson, senior director, interactive marketing and emerging media for Best Buy, unintentionally summed things up best when talking about its latest Twitter initiative, Twelpforce: How do you monitor the landscape when you have 1,000 andwers to one question?

Anyway, enjoy the video.