One of the most difficult questions to answer for many business and entreprenuers who are engaging in social media is, “in what ways, and how much is this affecting my business”. You need to be able to measure ROI at the end of the day, and it is a more difficult challenge in the new world of social media than it has traditionally has been.

A key point is to have a focus on what you are trying to accomplish when you first engage in social media. Don’t just jump in without a plan. Come up with something specific and measurable as an end goal, and make every decision around what you do, what you share, where you share it, etc, based on that.

Once you have established your end goals, take a benchmark of where are currently on those same measurements so you will know where you started. One you have these two points of data, where you started, and where you want to get, then you can begin to measure progress.

ROI may not be in terms of dollars, it may be in terms of followers, reduced call volumes, increased customer satisfaction, or any number of other measures. Dell has used Twitter as a channel for offering “Twitter only promotions” so they can measure exactly how much business they are doing specifically through that channel. What other creative ways can you come up with for using social media for your business that will be highly measureable in terms of ROI?