Being a communications professional, I mostly talk about social media with other professionals, be it in marketing, corporate communications, internal communications, ... One question arises quite often during these conversations: how do we measure ROI? This is a very relevant question especially from a marketing perspective.

And apparantly not only for communication- but also for IT-specialists, as I recently found out at a seminar about social media aimed at IT professionals. However, questions there did not include ROI, but were more about the best tools to use when implementing social media ‘what wiki should we use?', 'which blogging platform best allows measuring impact?', etc... These are also valid questions: IT professionals mostly are aware of how to measure the online impact, but they want to make sure they implement the software that most easily allows measurement later on. That is, of course, because they are the people the communication department will turn to when wanting to know the ROI of their social media efforts.

Now imagine what happens when you combine the knowledge of an IT-professional with that of a communications specialist....

When they combine forces, any social media project will have a higher chance of success. Together, they know exactly what to say, what platform to use to spread the message and will be able to track impact afterwards.

So, if you are a communications professional thinking of setting up a social media project, have a chat with your IT department first. Chances are, they will have good advice and come up with questions and tips you hadn't even thought about. It has definitely proven to work for us ;-).