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One of the biggest questions companies ask themselves before investing in online social marketing revolves around the challenge of evaluating the return on investment (ROI). In general companies have few benchmarks as compared with traditional media to measure the success of these campaigns.

Nevertheless, it is possible to quantify them. Starbucks got one million clients in only one day thanks to a campaign launched in social circles. Read the complete engagement study in PDF here.

Recently, a new study (PDF) was published by Syncapse whose objective was to evaluate the commercial impact of clicking on the Facebook "Like" button. The conclusion is that on average those users that are fans of a company in the most popular social network spend an additional $71.84 on products for which they are fans compared to those who are not fans.

From Mashable, by Shane Snow.

Social networking has finally become something valuable for brick-and-mortar businesses. Smartphones and location-based social networks allow users to interact, share, meet up, and recommend places based on their physical coordinates. This real-world connection to social media can mean more foot traffic and profits for business owners.

So-called “lo-so” networks like Foursquare, Loopt, and Gowalla enable any business with a physical location to not only communicate with customers online, but actually get more of them to walk in the door — and that’s exciting.

The question any brick-and-mortar business owner should be asking him or herself is no longer “Should I use lo-so networks?” It’s “How do I do it?” The following tips are essential to getting started.

Read the full article.

Google Buzz is a new way to share updates, photos, videos and more, and start conversations about the things you find interesting. You can use Buzz from your computer through your Google Gmail account, but the true strength of Buzz lies on your Smartphone. Buzz just hit the streets and we need to see how it is embraced and understand its implications. So far so good. The combination of location-based services and friends dialogue is interesting.

In fact Google's search technology adapts quite well to the mobile application both in relevance of recommendations and location-based services. Be ready to rethink your approach to privacy with the mobile interface and be careful to select "no location" before you post with your mobile phone if you do not want to reveal your whereabouts. Eventually you might feel tempted to do so, but we still live in a private society so reluctance to being open about location will exist.

Here's what you can do with Google Buzz for mobile:

- Post from your mobile phone and tag your location.
- Read what people are buzzing about near you.
- Follow your friends on the go.