One of the primary struggles in the PR industry is measuring results and companies’ return on investment (ROI). Core goals in PR, including raising awareness and maximizing exposure, produce more intangible results than other disciplines. So, oftentimes, it’s hard to make a direct link to a client’s sales or increasing revenue. The same goes for social media – how can you measure the impact of a tweet or maintaining an updated Facebook profile?

Well, a recent infographic from MDG Advertising delved into these questions and actually found that 74 percent of CMOs believe they’ll be able to tie social media efforts directly to ROI this year. And, what’s even more promising, 96 percent of CMOs are starting to look beyond sales and Web metrics to identify the value of social media efforts. This is a key component to really analyze the overall effect of the more intangible aspects of such initiatives – beyond click counts.

In addition to dramatically reducing marketing costs over the long run, social media was found to have helped:

• 72 percent with closing business deals
• 45 percent with developing new partnerships
• 65 percent with SEO

Of the various social media platforms, companies were found to have the most significant ROI success with Facebook at 15.4 percent, Twitter at 11.4 percent, LinkedIn at 10.9 percent and YouTube at 6.9 percent. Similarly, companies have plans to increase social media investments with 77 percent focusing on YouTube, 75 percent on Facebook, 75 percent on blogs, 73 percent on Twitter and 61 percent on LinkedIn.

So, while the ROI of social media has traditionally been measured by click counts or website traffic spikes, it’s good to see CMOs and other company execs are looking beyond the tangible numbers to other forms of measurement.