Monetization challenges with Social Media

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Social media continues to b a top priority for marketers across the globe. Not only marketers, other departments like Sales, HR, Solution centers and R & D Labs accept the impact that social media has given to their activities. But the key remains that thought there is buy in from senior management, monetizing social media campaigns can be a very tricky affair.

To look at this from the historical perspective, It has always been a challenge to calculate the ROI for marketing spends. Almost all marketing activities require downstream sales or operational support to ensure a sale is completed hence we are able to attach a monetary value to the marketing effort. This is relatively easier in the B2C and product companies. But the real challenge comes in the services business where the brand is experienced from the services offered and interactions with the company personnel.
Social Media monetization offers a similar challenge. How to monetize the effort?
Now measurement of impact has become easy.

There are social media tools that would tell you how many people received your message on Twitter or how many lives you have received for a particular post. Some will also measure the sentiment associated with a certain discussion to let the brand know if the conversation is in the positive context of negative. Klout for example can give data on your true reach and amplification. Also the number of followers on Twitter and connections on Facebook are again measurement tools.

But when it comes to monetization all this amounts to Nada.
One can measure sentiment but if the sentiment is not able to drive a enquiry or sale then it will difficult to monetize the same.

In the coming days most marketing dollars will be spent on finding the answers to this.
I would like to hear your opinion, on the same. How are you trying to monetize the impact of social media? What are the tools and techniques you are following?