In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, and the days following it, the ads that appeared in the game got plenty of online buzz, especially if they had social media tie-ins. But what about Pepsi, which decided to opt out of the game? Will it get better ROI from the Pepsi Refresh Project that than it would have from being on the Super Bowl telecast?

A few results are starting to come in. Clickz tallied up the number of Facebook fans that Super Bowl advertisers had before and after the game. Pepsi’s rival, Coke, which had several spots during the game, added nearly 390,000 fans to its page. Pepsi added about 300,000 fans, but it still trails Coke in total fans. Coke now has nearly 5 million, while Pepsi has around 515,000.

True, fan count isn’t a very good measure of ROI. But with all the money Pepsi reportedly is devoting to digital marketing for the Refresh Project, it had an opportunity to pull closer to Coke in the social-media wars. At least by this measure, Coke still won.

And while Pepsi has gotten plenty of PR in the marketing community for its decision to skip the Super Bowl, Coke’s in-game ads generated awareness among consumers—the people who actually buy its products.

Some think Pepsi made a mistake by not tying the Refresh Project in with a Super Bowl ad. Jeremiah Owyang, a partner in the Altimeter Group, wrote this week in Forbes: “By not having any in-game discussion on the advertisements, [Pepsi] was unable to use the Super Bowl or its advertisements as a catapult to launch the campaign into the social sphere. In fact, after the game, overall mentions of Pepsi and the Pepsi Refresh campaign remained relatively on the same trajectory as before.”

The Refresh Project is expected to last a year, so the good news is that Pepsi has plenty of time beyond the near-term buzz of the Super Bowl to generate ROI. But it will only be successful if it has clear objectives and ties its social media efforts in with its bottom-line results.

As Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer’s CEO, writes in the new Insight Brief “Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media,” “It is impossible for marketers to measure success if they do not know what their objectives are before they start a social media marketing initiative.” To succeed, Geoff asserts, marketers must establish clear marketing goals, organize their measurements into a logical framework and take a long-term approach.

PepsiCo’s Frank Cooper told SmartBrief on Social Media that he’s looking at three key measurements: relationships with consumers, social media activity and sales lift.

“First and foremost we’re focused on relationships. We are building more relationships and we have more points of contact with our consumers. That’s a positive thing. We can measure that. We know how many more people  that we’re contacting. We can also measure the activity within the social-media space. We already see today what’s happening on Twitter. We see what’s happening on Facebook — and the response has been tremendous. And then third, I think ultimately, this whole idea of allowing people to do good through our platform, we believe will actually serve us at the shelf. I believe we will see a sales lift coming from this.”

Whether Pepsi’s Refresh Project is successful or not depends on its ability to follow through and not only measure those things but also apply them to its entire marketing plan.

“Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media” is part of a series of eMarketer Insight Briefs focused on social media marketing. Available exclusively to Total Access subscribers, the seven briefs, along with a PowerPoint slideshow, answer the most common and most pressing questions that businesses have about social media marketing.

Total Access subscribers, log in and view the Insight Briefs now. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription today.

According to Nielsen, 12% of US Super Bowl viewers multitasked by browsing the Web during the game last year. The top site visited was Facebook, and nearly one-third of multitaskers visited some kind of member community—for more than 16 minutes on average. Just as multitaskers post status updates and tweets about their favorite shows, when Super Bowl time comes they chatter about their favorite ads.

What created the most buzz in this year’s Super Bowl? Twitter employee Kevin Weil posted a fascinating minute-by-minute breakdown yesterday of Twitter updates mentioning brands during the game. It’s definitely worth a look.

The first @DoritosUSA ad at marker C caused the largest per-minute volume of commercial-related tweets — for the minute following the ad, related tweets were 19% of all tweets we saw, eclipsing even the chatter around the Super Bowl itself for a brief period. The second half began with a bang as @TheSaints recovered a surprise onside kick, and for the next minute 44% of all worldwide tweets were about football. Chatter around brands had meanwhile dropped to much lower levels until @Google’s Parisian Love commercial sparked viewers once more.

The tens of thousands of tweets at stake during the Super Bowl can mean an earned-media coup for brands—if viewers find the creative worth talking about. The new eMarketer Insight Brief, “What You Need to Know About Earned Media,” explains how good content is critical to getting consumers to spread marketers’ messages for them. Making ads easily shareable helps too—and this year YouTube has added to its Super Bowl Ad Blitz voting site hooks to share spots on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Controversy can boost chatter as well. After the game, Audi crept up BrandBowl’s Twitter monitoring scoreboard as users disagreed on whether the “Green Police” had an eco-friendly message.

But earned media is ultimately in the control of consumers, and marketers with unappealing content might find themselves the target of a Twitter #advertisingfail hashtag. Twitter users were unimpressed with GoDaddy’s efforts this year, and Dockers, which included an online call to action in its commercial, was unprepared for Super Bowl levels of traffic to its contest site.

More advice from “What You Need to Know About Earned Media” on boosting earned-media exposure:

• Give people good content, especially content they can personalize and send on to their friends. The better the content, the more likely they will be to share it.
• Good creative that resonates with viewers will help spur social sharing and online discussion.

• Actively enable sharing by adding distribution buttons on Facebook, Twitter and other sites.
• Provide a contest or other incentives to encourage people to pass messages along.

“What You Need to Know About Earned Media” is part of a series of eMarketer Insight Briefs focused on social media marketing. Available exclusively to Total Access subscribers, the seven briefs, along with a PowerPoint slideshow, answer the most common and most pressing questions that businesses have about social media marketing.

Total Access subscribers, log in and view the Insight Briefs now. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription today.

Sunday’s big game between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts was nearly as splashy in social media as it was on TV.

Marketers that paid millions to advertise during the telecast also put sizeable energy into making sure that their ads had visibility on the social web. Coca-Cola Co. teamed up with Facebook to distribute Coke-themed virtual gifts and preview its Super Bowl spots for its fans. Pepsi notoriously bowed out of advertising during the game in favor of a cause-related digital marketing initiative that included a major presence on Facebook. Other marketers took to Twitter to keep their ads top of mind among consumers.

Even before the game telecast, the online buzz surrounding football star Tim Tebow’s ad for Focus on the Family was strong, according to Nielsen Co. In the two months ending January 31, the ad garnered 33.4% of all Super Bowl ad-related buzz online. Meanwhile, the NFL created a Twitter tag, #SB44, and encouraged fans to use the tag when they discussed the game.

With all the hype, what was the end result? The most-watched television event of all time. CBS estimates that the 2010 Super Bowl drew 106.5 million viewers, beating the famed 1983 “M*A*S*H” series finale, which was watched by about 105.9 million.

There’s no doubt that all the activity surrounding the Super Bowl is a signal that TV is finally getting more social, though we’re certainly not all the way there. While the coming onslaught of Internet-ready televisions will play a role, the entertainment industry has yet to figure out how to logically incorporate social media into the act of watching television. But they will.

The socialization of TV is one of eight trends that I cover in my new eMarketer Insight Brief “The Future of Social Media Marketing.” Some of my other predictions include:

• Advertising will not be the primary revenue driver for social media.
• Status updates will be key.
• Social will make search more personal—and more powerful.
• Social media monitoring will bring true insights.

“The Future of Social Media Marketing” is part of a series of eMarketer Insight Briefs focused on social media marketing. Available exclusively to Total Access subscribers, the seven briefs, along with a PowerPoint slideshow, answer the most common and most pressing questions that businesses have about social media marketing.

Total Access subscribers, log in and view the Insight Briefs now. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription today.