We are back with the latest edition of our series, @Me next time, where we invite the Sprout team and some of our favorite social experts to share how they really think about the latest trends and industrial discourse.
This time we unpack how we can define the business value of social media. To be honest, if measuring and communicating the value of socially was cut and dry, every marketer would already do it. But there are no easy answers, or one-size-fits-all comparisons or attribution models.
Only 44% of marketing leaders say that their teams are ‘experts’ when it comes to measuring the business value of social, according to the Impact of 2025 of marketing report for social media. Yet 80% are nevertheless funds from traditional marketing channels for social allocations. There is an instinctive concept that stimulates social business value, but teams are still struggling to prove it.
We sat down with Carmen Vicente, Social Media Manager at Gorgias – A conversation AI platform for E -commerce brands – to find out how her team of Social Meet the Roi. She explained why discovering the true impact can be a moving target (and why it doesn’t have to be negative).
The business value of social media, according to marketing leaders
According to the impact of Social Report, more than two -thirds of the marketing leaders are convinced that social brand awareness generates. But if we approach peak saturation about networks and are confronted with a tumultuous socio -economic climate, top of funnel statistics such as consciousness mean less.
More than half of these leaders are of the opinion that social acquisition, customer loyalty and income from customers encourages. Although they are not so confident in the ability of their team to bind socially to those results.
Instead, most social ROI leaders define with involvement (68%) and conversion (65%) metrics. Only 57% bind social impact on income.
In the experience of Vicente varies how socially measured per industry. “If someone who came out of the B2C room, my feelings about social ROI have changed quite a bit since I entered B2B. In B2C, much of my reporting was aimed at, leaned in emotional stories and was based on mood. In B2B, data is king. If you cannot link your efforts to the income, you will struggle in contextualizing your impact organization. “
The lack of consensus about how to socialize is not surprising. But Vicente argues that this can work in favor of teams: “Social media are not static. If the way you measure it, then you probably have a problem. At Gorgias, ROI is a continuous conversation quarterly-to-quarter. We are always again defending how we want to measure it, our systems for several companies are the speed to be done with success.
The challenges of defining the business value of social media
The speed of social is only one aspect that makes its impact difficult to measure. The larger challenges are in the shifting of meticulous performance filosophies.
Even as more investments in becoming social of traditional channels, leaders are still often social data in conventional measuring systems afterwards. But non-linear customer journeys (such as those driven by social search and community management) cannot be fully recorded by old models.
“I always try to cram our social successes in frameworks that have been in SaaS for a long time. That feels like you are trying to push a square pin into a round hole. That does not mean that these existing frameworks do not work, but they are built around sales or partnerships. Social is an amorphic blob that does not always fit in primexist categories,” says. “
Incompatibility between social media tools and martech stacks
Bad technical integration shoulders much of the debt. More than half of all marketing leaders say that incompatibility between their social media management tools and the rest of their MarketingTech -Stack The #1 reason is that they cannot understand the impact of social on their company, according to the impact of social report. Less than half say that their teams embed social data in CRM software.
This places social marketers in a precarious catch-22. They must develop the skills to share cross-functional insights. But they also need tools that come to the surface and integrate with other sources, and leaders who ensure that this integration is at the top of the priority list of their analysis teams.
Not enough executive support
When managers support social teams and help in prioritizing analysis infrastructure, it moves the needle.
Teams that are experts in the business value of Social are more likely to use social media management tools and cross-functional reporting software and have the confidence of their leaders in their ability to perform. They also have less chance of struggling with setting up reliable attribution models.
Vicente experiences this first hand. “There is a lot that depends on how much the C-suite believes in the impact of Social. Gorgias’ CMO encourages me to pitch ideas, and we have worked together to measure the success of our efforts based on campaigns, projects and other marketing objectives instead of a baseline printing model. Because of that, I can more creative and more creative.
Internal knowledge
According to the impact of Social Report, digital marketing teams will most likely use social data to inform their decisions – on a long shot. But leaders say that they want teams such as customer experience and success, customer service and support and business development to use social insights to encourage their decisions. To make that happen, teams must share access to social democratization and share reports that go beyond commitments and conversions.
Of course you are not completely out of the forest once you have data. When sharing insights cross-functional sharing, social marketers must translate for internal target groups that do not always become socially ‘become’ in a professional sense ‘.
“Within the marketing bubble, I feel at ease in strategic terms about the work I do and the goals of the content team. In addition to marketing, I am guilty of trivializing the importance of social or the complexity of our strategy because I want to seem fun and fascinate. If social marketers are extracted for our content for our content.
The challenge of having internal data stories has been felt in the entire industry. Practitioners and marketing leaders say that communicating performance statistics on internal stakeholders are among the most important skills that social teams need in 2025, according to the Sprout Social Index ™.
The less (with more intention) socially translated into business value
In every conversation about social ROI there is a natural boost to want to do more. But the reality is that many teams are already pushed to the maximum, and more because of creating less room for analysis and strategy.
It is especially a challenge if the call to do more comes from leaders. According to the impact of social report, 71% of marketing directors and 69% of CMOs believe that their teams should increase their social media publication volumes if they want to increase the business impact. Only half of the social media managers agree.
Benchmarks tell a different story. Although the publication volume decreased from 2023 to 2024, involvement increased by almost 20%. Consumers want more originality, authenticity and community – not brands that only post.
Vicente summarized it pleasantly: “When I first started at Gorgias, I was over trying to break into new platforms. I did not consider the sage advice to meet your customers where they are. As a social marketer at a B2B company, I wanted me to spend more time on experimenting on LinkedIn.”
Instead of boosting the publication frequency or finding a house everywhere for your brand, to identify, identify broader target group truths and include them in your content and reporting. Help leadership to inform that what is most important to the public is that you are not about their feed – it is that you really understand them.
Even small experiments help make your business
And if you get a feeling in your feeling to tell you to try something new, start small, test you while your data is going to use your feeling.
At Gorgias, their biggest ROI deflecting is advocacy of employees. Vicente explains: “Last year I performed a beta test in which the content was compared on my personal page v. The brand LinkedIn account. The result was amazing and confirmed how the LinkedIn -algorithm treats personal accounts differently than brand pages. So in Q1 2025 we were launched with only 20 teams. Ver.
You can use the same beta framework to find a plea for launching a creator program, investing in a video -seo -strategy or even building reporting -infrastructure that connects social media activities to income. For example, choose one social campaign or initiative to connect to CRM or web analytics data and use it as a proof of concept.
Re -defining the business value of social media
Defining the business value of social media is not about chasing a perfect formula – it is about building the right framework for your team, your industry and your goals.
As Vicente shared, the most impactful measuring strategies evolve as fast as social self. Whether it concerns smaller experiments, regularly define ROI or bring managers to the conversation, progress is happening when teams remain flexible and intentionally.
The real business value of social does not come from adjusting outdated models, but of the evidence-through fascinating, socially-first data stories-how stimulates loyalty and growth.
Download the impact of 2025 of marketing report for social media for a in-depth analysis of what social marketers can do to ensure that their reporting infrastructure gives priority to the right statistics, and how social data can offer value-wide.
#business #social #media #evolving