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Unfortunately, it seems that the general consensus about trying to calculate ROI and social media is: "Don't".
I've read numerous articles revealing the difficulties (should I venture to even say, inability) of measuring the monetary ROI of social media marketing, in the same way that traditional marketing ROI has been measured-

Marketing ROI = Gross Margin - Marketing Investment / Marketing Investment

citing that the majority of the fore-running companies who have implemented successful social media marketing  campaigns, are receiving the support behind their efforts and budget spends, of their campaigns, from executives who just 'understand' the value of social media. And this seems to be the conclusion, thus far, among many social media marketers: "Your bosses don’t need the numbers behind social media marketing; you need your bosses to understand the value of social media."

However, this attitude of, “you don’t need to measure it if everyone else isn’t,” can’t and shouldn’t be the final accepted practice in regards to the problem of social media marketing and ROI. This is especially true in China (and I’m assuming many Asian companies, as well, that place a heavy emphasis on the numbers), which has seen a trend in Chinese companies pushing their PR departments to prove that they are adding value to bottom line- as quoted by Roger Chen, the General Manager of Image and Citizenship for Microsoft in China, in my previous post about the trends of social media in China.

The difficulty in measuring the monetary ROI of social media marketing is in proving that social media contributes to the bottom line, and it seems that few companies have been able to quantitatively claim that their activity in social media has led to an increase in sales- mainly because social media isn’t just focused on sales, but also focuses on developing long-term relationships and brand commitment over an extended period of time (perhaps much longer than traditional campaign time frames). However, especially in our tight economy, executives are looking for the numbers and profits behind any budget spend.

So, perhaps as we see that social media marketing isn’t really like traditional marketing’s focus on sales, but on creating relationships and dialogue with customers, that we can’t use the same Marketing ROI equation: Marketing ROI = Gross Margin – Marketing Investment / Marketing Investment, but need to develop some new form of Social Media Marketing ROI which takes into account the monetary value of long-term relationships and brand commitment. This view of considering the monetary value of brand strengthening has been discussed before in a post on Social Media Today, by Jacob Morgan, and his updated equation for Social Media ROI:

Social Media ROI = [(Gain from Investment - Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment] + Strengthening of the brand

This leads into a whole different issue about how to actually calculate the monetary value behind this mystical, ‘strengthening of the brand’, but it’s a step forward from the widely accepted view of “How To Measure Your Social Media ROI: Don’t”, and its these small steps that need to be taken to progress to a standardized and methodology in calculating social media marketing ROI.

But this still leaves me without a means of how to quantify how my current social media marketing efforts are performing, and also how to quantify the results from my six month internship. Though not necessarily directly relating to monetary ROI, there are some means of measuring effectiveness of social media, but the focus is off monetary returns, but in terms of the conversations and connections people are having within this medium. This list is by no means exhaustive but is a good kick-start to actually measuring something useful to gauge improvement needs.

Website: Traffic Sources (Facebook/Twitter/Blog), Software Downloads, Unique Visits, Page Views, Length of Visit, Links
Twitter:  Mentions, ReTweets, Followers
Blog: Subscribers, Unique Visits, Page Views, Length of Visit, Comments, Links
Facebook: Fans
UserVoice Feedback: Entries, Votes

These are definitely very preliminary measurement methods, so I’m hoping that I’ll get some advice/feedback from the community– what are the metrics and methods that your social media efforts are being measured by? Or if there aren’t any quantitative means being measured- how is your company gauging the value of your social media efforts?