For any company, engaging in social media is a use of resources. Whether you do it yourself or hire someone else to, it is an investment of time, labor, and thus money.

So a common thread in social web is "Whats the ROI?", or the return on investment, for non-investing types.

Is it possible to say, "I spend $50,000 on a social media person and I receive an extra $1,000,000 in sales."?

Amber Naslund of Altitude Branding calls ROI a "dead horse", saying, "We aren’t going to figure all of this out neatly in time to take action
without risk of failure. In fact, the time to take action is now. It’s
yesterday."

Except ROI is very important to decision makers who don't get social media. It's important for everyone with limited resources who wants to know what kind of return they'll get. And this reminds me of the book I'm currently reading, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, where he talks about "thin slicing", the ability to quickly assess information and make a good decision without being overwhelmed by too much information.

The importance of the ability to thin slice is paramount in social media. As Amber says, the time to take action is now.