HootSuite Enterprise is now integrated with Webtrends to provide marketers with a detailed view of social media ROI. "Analytics is a core tenet of HootSuite's enterprise social media management system, and the HootSuite – Webtrends integration adds even more value for our Enterprise clients," claims HootSuite.

If it works, it will come as welcome news to social media marketers. Marketers in a September Awareness survey said that measuring ROI was the top social media marketing challenge, cited by 57% respondents. The leading difficulties in measuring social media ROI are that it is hard to tie social media to actual business results (54%); it is hard to analyze unstructured social media data (also 54%); and it is hard to integrate disparate social media data resources (50%), all of which this integration purports to solve.

Available to HootSuite Enterprise and Webtrends On-Demand customers, the integration connects social media messages to website conversion stats, which should enable organizations to optimize social strategies and compare social ROI against other digital channels (e.g., SEO, SEM, email, display), using a command center/dashboard view (see graphic).

HootSuite claims to granularize the measurements that social media marketers find elusive in calculating ROI. Among the measures:

• Message Efficacy: Which message types result in the highest number of conversions? What are the best practices for increasing specific on-site actions? Which words drice the most conversions?
• Social Account: Which Twitter account is the source of the most valuable website traffic? Is there a business case to invest more resources in organic online engagement? Should more or less social accounts be managed?
• Social Networks: Which platform is providing the greatest return on the brand page: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn? Where is engagement weak, and where is it strong?
• Time of Day: Which time of day is most effective to drive high-quality traffic to the website? When is the target audience on social and looking to buy?