Navigating New Territory | Connect Your Meetings (Dave Olson at SoMeT)

That last topic, as always, is a common question for marketers and organizations utilizing social media, and the answers often vary, even at this conference. Mattsson admits, “Measuring ROI for social media is a tricky one. We use engagement within the channel as our biggest benchmark—such as virality and talking about this on Facebook—and we track links back to our other digital assets.” Lots of presentations, such as Vanderplaetse’s, included similar measurements of engagement or reach, although few included hard conversion numbers—something that was part of a presentation at SoMeT11.

Dave Olson, vice president of community at HootSuite, ended his presentation about building an impassioned and actively supportive community around a brand or destination by asking the question, “How do you measure happiness?” On the surface, it seems a flip remark for a serious business to consider, but most businesses know that a happy customer is a returning customer. Just as most meeting planners know that a happy conference community keeps attendees coming back.