Social media has had a dramatic impact on the business world, empowering brands and marketers to build and leverage huge audiences, provide first class, first point customer support and drive traffic, awareness and sales.

Bottom line: everyone wants to grow their fan base. But how can brands measure their return on investment?

In November, Wildfire conducted a global survey of over 700 marketers about their social media ROI, and the impact it has made on their business.

Key takeaways:

• 97 percent of marketers believe that social media benefits their business
• 75 percent intend to increase their social media marketing spend in 2012
• 94 percent of marketers ranked Facebook as their top social marketing channel, ahead of Twitter (74 percent), blogs (41 percent) and LinkedIn (32 percent)
• Marketers have no standard way to measure social media ROI – 38 percent judge ROI by the number of Facebook Likes received, 24 percent by revenue and 15 percent by the increase in brand awareness

(Source: Wildfire. Top image credit: Jasha via Shutterstock.)