“For those who are measuring it, social media is showing positive ROI. Based on the survey results, The overall average ROI reported by CMOs who are measuring it is 95 percent. One-quarter said they have achieved 100 percent ROI. Higher percentages were reported, too. Twelve percent said they have achieved 200 percent ROI; two percent reported 1,000 percent ROI.”

- Lisa Arthur, “Study: Marketers Reporting Social Media ROI of 100, 200, Even 1,000 Percent” from Forbes.

Social media is growing up. From today’s LinkedIn IPO to the nearly global acceptance of Twitter and Facebook as the most popular places to spend time online, social has gone a long way from being a series of shiny objects to standing as a solid center of attention in the online marketing space.

Marketing Sherpa recently released its 2011 Social Marketing Benchmark Report. In stark contrast to even two years ago (when CMOs reported almost no ROI across the board for social), the average return on social investment for over 3K+ business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketers was just below 100%.

It’s easy to conclude, with some certainty, that the brands experiencing these sky-high ROI from their social media have a robust, long-term strategy that makes sense for their brands. In fact, many are likely the same ones who reported almost no ROI two years ago. Their dedication to the medium, stemming from the increase in users on those channels, has paid off.

The illusion of social has always been that “anyone can do it.” The sentiment that social is quick and easy experiences the same pitfalls as any marketing strategy that promises results based on fast, minimal effort. Instead, it is the long-term, consistent, customer-savvy efforts that will yield the best results.

Social media is here to stay. If they want to see positive ROI, a brand’s strategies should follow suit with a responsible, long-term focus.

“It’s not ten years, not five years away, it’s a couple years away–tops–where social is literally so imbued into the experience that it’s just another ranking factor like anything else.”

- Stefan Weitz, director at Bing, “Bing’s Social Search Won’t Always Rely On Facebook ‘Likes’” from Fast Company.

This week Bing announced that it would begin to allow Facebook factors to integrate and influence its search results even more heavily than before. The move is an effort to better filter search results based on two main approval factors: friends (Facebook Likes) and the majority (“Collective IQ”). Bing’s is making social more of a integral part of its search results, rather than just an additional layer.

It’s been said that the web doesn’t have a problem of information overload, but a problem of filter failure. Both Bing and Google have recently subscribed to the philosophy of improving that filter with social data. The news is further evidence of the growing trend in helping filter the internet’s information based on the approval of experts, majorities and friends.

Digital marketing experts are often divided about directing resources towards social instead of search. If the hundreds of millions of social media users weren’t reason enough for a brand to carefully consider social, the effects those users are beginning to have on search should be. Social is quickly becoming synonymous with search. Which leads us to believe that brands that want to succeed digitally, a social strategy is no longer a question or an option, it is now essential.

“Depending on how mentions are used, there may even be an expectation that the person tagged in a comment comes and leaves a reply of their own (in other words, you can call people out).”

- Jason Kincaid, “Disqus Brings @Mentions To Comment Threads” from Techcrunch

Comments have been one of the slowest components of Web 2.0 to evolve. For what felt like forever, you had to register (often times exposing yourself to unsolicited emails) to leave a comment (for approval) that you would eventually forget about. Even the notification system of an email when someone commented on your comment, seemed roundabout.

Recently, the two largest social networks on the web have been leveraged to take comments to the level they should have been at years ago. Both Facebook’s “Comments” social plugin and Disqus (which now includes a more robust Twitter integration, including @mentions) have improved comment systems by leaps and bounds to offer social commenting.

Not only are these new improvements to the comment sphere great for marketers looking to make (tasteful) product or service plugs, but they also present a greater opportunity to unearth true influencers.

Gone are the days of counting Twitter followers and deeming someone an expert. Places like Quora and the recent comment platform improvements reveal not only who engages with the latest news or opinion bits on the web, but who now becomes an ongoing participant in a discussion and can offers insights. Consider it an additional (or even more heavily weighed) metric for the ongoing influencer algorithm. Vocal topic enthusiasts can often be the first to become vocal brand enthusiasts after they are introduced to a product or service give the stamp of approval.

Discussions online are becoming more authentic and more useful everyday. Brands should begin to consider combing comment threads as a community management best practice and use them as a place for marketing outreach and influencer discovery.

“The recession has redefined the consumer’s relationship with retailers, and social and mobile applications have accelerated this change. Consumers are challenging retailers to be creative and deliver a multi-channel experience that stands out.”

- Alison Paul, U.S. retail sector leader at Deloitte via “US Shoppers Get Digital” on Warc.

Online marketing is experiencing a huge demand for multi-channel experiences. Developing a healthy Digital Ecosystem is the foundation for delivering this experience. For marketing purposes a Digital Ecosystem aligns strategy, creative, user experience and organizational components of a campaign or brand’s online properties. This disciplined approach to all digital touch points, there is an emphasis on engagement, collaboration, sharing, transparency and trust-building that can be an unmatched advantage for organizations looking to build true digital engagement.

With mobile rapidly replacing the stationary model of the desktop or the tethered laptop computer, a brand’s ability to cater to a specific mobile experience is becoming a priority. “Among the 32% of people owning a web-enabled smartphone, 43% had used it while in bricks and mortar outlets ‘to assist in their shopping’, and 37% would like to have done so, but faced connectivity issues,” sites a Deloitte survey of 1,050 American consumers.

How does a brand become mobile sensitive within their Digital Ecosystem? It is important to remember that mobile is no longer just about check-ins and badges.Can non brick-and-mortar brands offer a strong mobile component to a campaign? In what ways should a mobile optimized website differ from a traditional home page? How much of a role does location play?

There are campaign specific answers to all of these kinds of questions. A degree of creativity may be required to meet the challenge of mobile. One thing is certain—it’s even trickier to have a true multi-channel experience without a mobile component.

“With Twitter at 50 million Tweets per day, Facebook with 60 million daily status updates, plus check-in data from Gowalla and Foursquare the volume becomes staggering. Between just those websites we’re talking about 1,000 pieces of information per second.”

- Bryan Menell, “Big Data is the New Frontier” on Dachis Group.

The size of the social data space is staggering. With an increasingly high percentage of internet users liking, tweeting, reviewing, commenting, mentioning and blogging, there is a lot of information to digest. For businesses, particularly marketers, this presents new opportunity to hone in on some of the data to gain insight into almost any demographic.

Internally, “Big Data” is parsed at a micro-level for each and every brand or product , even if they have only been playing in the social media space for a couple of months. With most editorial calendars coming out with half a dozen Tweets and a pair of Facebook posts per day, there are thousands of interactions tidbits to measure. At the conclusion of a campaign, it’s important to analyze these interactions.

Can we see what worked and what didn’t? Who can we rely on to collaborate with? What new communities can we tap into?

In terms of influence, not all followers or fans are created equal. Some are potential partners or superfans, who have interacted with your brand more in the past and who have a bigger audience than others. If you’ve already made the digital handshakes and established relationships with certain influencers, continue to build with them going forward. Whether its leveraging pre existing relationships, building robust contact lists, and prioritizing your messaging, analyzing your brand’s “Big Data” can go a long way to improving for future campaigns.

In the digital ecosystem of any brand, each little piece plays its part. Finding a way to organize and analyze those pieces is becoming essential.

“For most of these questions, experts weren’t going to be the best source for advice,” said Adrian Graham, product manager, Facebook Questions. “For more unusual questions, you can get advice from a broader group of people, but to keep it most relevant we filter the answers to show you first what your friends think.”

“Facebook Targets Creatives” via Warc. Following up on last week’s Facebook Studio post.

Since Yahoo Answers became an abyss for real insight, a need has existed for a more intelligent online Q&A site. The frontrunner in this race for better answers to better questions has been Quora. Quora exists as a curiosity network with an answer refining community. Mainly, it is a place to collaboratively seek and provide expertise.

Aside from experts, there are two types of opinion and recommendation that people generally trust — majorities and friends. From Yelp to Amazon, almost any type of product or business has a wealth of reviews from hundreds or even thousands of users, establishing majority opinion across the web. The last in-demand side of the Q&A equation, friend opinion, has received an ideal platform.

Facebook Questions recently launched for both personal profiles and business pages. Whether it be for crowdsourcing, market research or just to drive engagement, Questions presents an opportunity for brands to finally poll fans naturally (without an app approval process). Like all Facebook tools, Questions comes with the largest built-in user base online. Users can “add an option” to these realtime polls and every time a user answers a question, it spreads to their newsfeed.

The open-ended, seamless feature is a step in the right direction for brands to become better friends with their fans by doing one simple thing: listening.

Not only does Facebook Questions serve a longstanding need to have a quality polling service available to marketers, it also offers the hard sought ability for brands to find out what their fans actually think.

“One of the biggest challenges that people talk to us about is that Facebook is not a place to be creative because the ad unit size is so small, and there’s no sight, sound and motion.”

Jennifer Kattula, Facebook’s recently hired manager of agency marketing.

Ms. Kattula’s admission that creative agencies, brand owners and market researchers are frustrated with Facebook Ads’ limited capabilities came attached at the hip with a forward-thinking announcement of relief. The world’s largest social network has decided to revolutionize their advertising model with a service tentatively known as Facebook Studio.

While specific details of Facebook Studio are anyone’s guess, Ms. Kattula did hint at some advertising best practices that Facebook wants to encourage. She specifically noted an Oreo campaign that produced over 10,000 audience engagements. The cookie brand posted questions on its wall such as “What’s your favourite part of an Oreo – the cookie or the crème?” All of their user comments spread like wildfire as the historical debate between cookie and cream raged its way into friends’ news feeds.

Facebook’s agency-facing service also suggests the introduction of collaborative elements. Will agencies be able to monitor and update their client’s brand from a central agency page? Logging into one’s agency page from an individual Facebook profile certainly fits into Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of authentic online identities. Considering the fact that online brand management tools such as HootSuite and Seesmic are useless when it comes to Facebook updates (although for Twitter they are fantastic), it seems only logical that the social network would create a more intuitive management platform within itself.

Looking even further, could Facebook, with it’s new Studio service, be taking one large step into the project-management arena? In any ad campaign there is always going to be the need for approval. If Facebook allowed for ad approval to happen on Facebook, emails and other forms of communication would dramatically decrease. Should Basecamp be worried?

We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.