http://MintSocial.com - ROI with Social Media Marketing and one of my favorite quotes about it by Steven Smith: “The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.” I could not agree more but for some reason companies not in the game and prospects I call on think this is a cute saying but they want to know what results they can expect or they are going to remain on the sidelines. In addition to saying to them, “well the conversation is going on around your brand with or without you” we also say, “let’s work with the number 5″. We see there are 5 basic ways to measure the results with social media marketing and online branding that are specific and measurable: 1. Increase mentions online through publishing of content on multiple online sources and create inbound links to website 2. Improve overall keyword rankings and specifically the top landing pages 3. Increase traffic to website 4. Build an online community through social media marketing 5. Help create inquiries and awareness of the online brand We can then take each of these 5 benchmarks and set goals that we can measure on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. To learn more on creating ROI with social media please visit http://MintSocial.com.