In an ROI-driven world, sometimes it's hard to justify the timespent on effectively working on social media. Although the expertsagree that thoughtfully planned and executed social media enhancesbrand recognition and engages customers, it's been hard to get ahandle on whether these efforts are paying off, especially forsmaller businesses with a lot more on their plate than updatingtheir Twitter feed.

(Real related: “Insurers Find Social Media Lacks ROI: So What?”)

Enter SumAll,an analytics tool specifically designed for small and midsizedbusinesses to visually compare data across all the social mediaplatforms they're using – and to connect the dots between theirsocial media efforts and the bottom line.

Using the tagline of “We're big data for small business,”SumAll, launched a year ago by CEO Dane Atkinson, links a company'ssocial media activity with metrics such as Web traffic and revenueto reveal the ROI of these efforts. And the tool's platformcomparison doesn't stop at Facebook and Twitter—SumAll recentlyadded Instagram, the smartphone photoshare service, to its other 12data sets it can integrate with, measured against their purchasetransaction and Web traffic data. The data sources also includeGoogle Analytics, eBay, PayPal and Shopify.

Go to SumAll's cheeky, succinct website for a look at how thesemeasurable are visualized in clear, easy to read graphics. Say thatyou ran a promotion on Twitter. The SumAll chart will compare yourGoogle Analytics data with your Twitter data to determine how muchtraffic your tweets really directed. You can track your activitydaily or weekly to determine what's working and what isn't, andmake changes on the fly – invaluable in the turn-on-a-dime socialmedia world.

There's also a SumAll mobile app for your iPhone or Android.

With more than 14,000 current users, the product, still in thebeta phase, seems to be skewing toward Gen Y entrepreneurs headingvery small businesses. SumAll's business philosophy reflects itsaudience—the company has allocated 10 percent of its ownership to anonprofit called SumAll.org, “a charter directed to do social goodmanaged by the SumAll team.”

Best of all? SumAll's basic service will remain free, althoughin the future the company will offer a premium paid service thatwill include deeper analysis of data sets, additional filters andcorrelation of multiple data sets.

What I find most impressive about SumAll – besides the freeelement – is its clarity and ease of use. If it's simple enough foran artist selling beads on Etsy to track, it's surely simple enoughfor an insurance agent to navigate.

Sounds like a win-win to me.