Social Marketing continues to expand in breadth and budget. In our latest study, most believe 2013 to be the year for mainstream adoption. Yet budget and unclear outcomes remain huge roadblocks.

In a striking study by Chief Marketer, out of 750 marketing professionals, an astounding 2 out of 5 are not confident in their social metrics. Only 13% are very confident in their measures, while 40% believe their metrics are “not very effective” or “not at all effective”.

Image from “Social Marketing Goes Mainstream” by Chief Marketer

While many argue that follower counts should not be a qualifier for success, it appears these quantitative measures are the most popular for benchmarking.  The top metric used by marketers are numbers of friends, followers or likes. Sharing, forwarding, RT or posting brand content falls at a close 2nd, and number of leads from social media snags spot number 3. Surprisingly, only 25% measure social success through sales attributable to social media.

Image from “Social Marketing Goes Mainstream” by Chief Marketer

Other highlights include:

• 14.6% of inbound traffic is coming from a social medium (last year this was 6.7%). For startups earning less than $1M, this soars to 19.8%.
• Top 3 tactics for engagement: Social Share buttons, Unique Content, and “Like” buttons throughout site.
• The highest pain point for social marketing was “Hard to calculate ROI accurately” gaining 52% of respondent’s votes.

You can access the full report for download here.

What metrics do you use to measure your social marketing campaigns? Do you have any tricks for tracking engagement? Participate on twitter with #pivotcon.