Reputation management is a key metric for social media ROI

Small business marketing and advertising is constantly monitored and measured to determine its return-on-investment. Are marketers seeing a significant number of new customers or increased purchases to continue running a campaign?

However, social media is different and, as a result, much harder to quantify. How much is a "like" on Facebook worth, or a post on LinkedIn? Instead, social media marketing must use a different set of metrics, including reach, branding, actions, costs and reputation issues avoided, ClickZ explains.

"Establish goals for your social media marketing and related metrics that can effectively track your progress and allow you to tweak your social media campaign to improve its effectiveness," the site noted.

Of the mentioned metrics, reputation issues avoided may be one of the most critical. As social media gives a voice to anyone at any time, the potential for an unhappy customer to make a small issue into a public one is quite large.

Small businesses looking to manage their reputation via social media should consider how large financial institutions are using the channel. Citibank, for example, has a specialized Twitter feed to answer customer questions and concerns.