Social Media Delivering on ROI for Walmart

Digital marketers have long considered social media as an important part of the channel mix; however, quantifying the value of social media has proven difficult, leaving many brands to conclude that little resources should be dedicated to social.  Walmart is one exception to this, which has "dedicated talent and dollars to creating a ROI-proving system for social media".  Unfortunately, Walmart's CMO, Stephen Quinn, does not elaborate on his ROI-proving system.  I would be interested to learn to what degree Walmart tracks fan behavior, for example, beyond Facebook across the internet and in brick & mortar stores.  It would also be interesting to hear how user-generated content translates into revenue--according to the article, Walmart sees 500,000 pieces of user-generated content per month (mostly on FB and Twitter).

Quinn commented, "We have ROI that's really strong.  And, it's transforming our organization.  This level of engagement we now have with customers is changing a whole bunch of other aspects of our marketing."  In fact, Walmart is seeing a 10x ROI on FB and Twitter compared to other advertising spends.  This seems to be the result of having scale and knowing how to make use of it.  Walmart has 31 million FB fans in the US (the highest of any brand) and 386,000 Twitter followers.  Rather than growing scale and then letting it sit, Walmart actively engages its fans by publishing 6-8 posts a day.  It also has employees dedicated to managing the social community so that they "are able to turn on a dime and react". 

Article: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/walmarts-social-getting-10x-roi-and-tens-thousands-daily-interactions-152912