Social Media Useless for Sales

As someone who researched social media in my consulting job...and later worked on a social media plan and campaign for a CPG over the summer, it's hard to admit that I wasn't always sure how helpful my efforts were in terms of driving sales. While I knew that my social media activity was great at building relationships with customers and enhancing brand loyalty among our fans, when I tried to tightly tie social media to sales goals, it was directionally OK, but weak.

A recent post on the Wide Angle blog from the Marketing Leadership Council proclaims that it's "Time to Get Real About Social Media." The article examines the retail and ecommerce sales on Black Friday and how much was attributed to social media. The results? A mere 0.37%. There were other previous studies that point toward a similar trend. Perhaps this number is deflated because people don't have proper mechanisms to link social media tactics to sales. Perhaps its because people weren't on social media as much during that time period? Perhaps it's a retail thing (vs. more helpful in other industries?)? I'm not sure. However, the article does give several sources of value for social media aside from just driving hard sales:

• Decreased advertising spend.
• Decreased customer support costs.
• Some degree of behavior change among existing customers. 
• Faster new product adoption. 

Anyone have thoughts? 

-Rebecca Canan