I’ve used the holiday season to catch up on my reading, plan posts for 2010 and start testing theories and strategies for our clients.

One topic that has particularly held my attention was how retailers and fashion brands can establish metrics and ROI for social media marketing. Establishing ROI isn’t a simple question with a simple answers. Many things play into establishing ROI; including measuring online brand perception, customer engagement, authenticity, etc.

As Breed points out, this is NOT ROI:

• The return of my Twitter usage is 2009 is 1,637 followers.
• I increased the page views of my website by 300% on an investment of $120.
• I increased my brand awareness by putting better content on my blog.

ROI goes much deeper than that. And for retailers, ROI comes down to three factors – sales, growing customer bases and maintaining customer loyalty.

Jason Breed and Olivier Blanchard offer some amazing insights on how to establish social media ROI. Before you plunge into new strategies or allocate your marketing dollars in 2010, I recommend sitting down with your entire staff or your marketing/PR/social media firm and discussing how all social marketing activities are going to lead sales, obtaining new customers and increasing customer loyalty.

As outlined in the awesome slideshare below, I’d also take it a step further and discuss how social media can be integrated into mobile marketing activities and translated into in-store traffic. Retailers or brands, if you use an outside agency, be prepared to give up sales data, forecasts and any information that can better help your partners outline their strategies.