Social media marketing is an important part of any business’s marketing campaign. It’s the best way to create a community, to encourage repeat buyers, and to provide a forum for you as a business to talk to your customers or clients. But it is, ultimately, a way for you to direct more people back to your website.
This means that, as with any type of internet marketing, you need a way to make sure that the time and money you’re investing in social media is actually worth that time and money. In short: that you’re making more money from using social media than you are putting into it. But how do you know if you’re succeeding or not? Here are the four steps you should take to measure your social media return on investment:
Decide Which Measurements You Actually Care About
Do you want to look at how many people comment on your posts, which is a good indicator of engagement, or do you simply want to look at likes or forwards? There are lots of different statistics you can keep track of, but keeping track of all of them is just going to become frustrating and ultimately useless. Look at the state of your social media campaign and determine which items you actually care about, which are going to give you the information you need to actually make improvements to your campaign, and which are going to give you the greatest insights when it comes to understanding the people who follow you.
Decide Which Tools You Are Going to Be Using
There are hundreds of tools that you can utilize in order to track your social media ROI. Some are going to be better than others. Most social media actually have their own built-in tools that businesses can use to track engagement, comments, follower behavior, reach, etc., but in some instances, you might not actually find that the information provided by these metrics are actually useful to you. Google Analytics is and probably always will be one of the best options for tracking the success of a marketing endeavor. Social Report is another useful tool, as is SproutSocial and Argyle Social.
Add the Account You Are Going to Track and Start Making Goals
Once you’ve decided which tool you’re going to use to track your progress, it’s time to add your accounts to the tool, note which items you’re going to track, and to start setting goals for improvement in those areas. Setting goals might not seem like it is a big part of measuring your social media ROI, but there is essentially no point to measuring your return on investment if you do not have goals for extending your reach or improving your engagement. Some of the best goals to track include subscriptions to your newsletter, how engaged your Twitter following is, and what keywords are being searched to find you.
Start Requesting Reports
At the very least, you should be running reports once a month. This should actually be done as regularly as possible, often at the same time that you are reporting on your other campaigns, so you can see how your social media campaign is competing with its fellows. Monthly should give you plenty of data to determine what strategies are panning out and which are falling flat. Most of the tools mentioned above should allow you to choose an option that automatically sends you an emailed report at a certain point each month. This can make it very easy and convenient to get the information you need about your social media campaign, delivered directly to your inbox.
Once you’ve started tracking your ROI, it is extremely important that you do not stop tracking. One of the reasons most campaigns fail is because those campaigns simply stop getting the attention that they need and that they deserve. If you give up on your campaign, you are going to find yourself without the information that you need in order to continue making improves. As a result, you start to stagnate. And stagnation in social media is the kiss of death.
Start checking your targets, making changes to your campaign, and testing, testing, testing. Are you meeting your goals? Exceeding them? What changes need to be made in order to meet them? What are you learning about your customer as you track their behavior in response to your social media posts?
Social media marketing is an important part of any business’s marketing campaign. It’s the best way to create a community, to encourage repeat buyers, and to provide a forum for you as a business to talk to your customers or clients. But it is, ultimately, a way for you to direct more people back to your website.
This means that, as with any type of internet marketing, you need a way to make sure that the time and money you’re investing in social media is actually worth that time and money. In short: that you’re making more money from using social media than you are putting into it. But how do you know if you’re succeeding or not? Here are the four steps you should take to measure your social media return on investment:
Decide Which Measurements You Actually Care About
Do you want to look at how many people comment on your posts, which is a good indicator of engagement, or do you simply want to look at likes or forwards? There are lots of different statistics you can keep track of, but keeping track of all of them is just going to become frustrating and ultimately useless. Look at the state of your social media campaign and determine which items you actually care about, which are going to give you the information you need to actually make improvements to your campaign, and which are going to give you the greatest insights when it comes to understanding the people who follow you.
Decide Which Tools You Are Going to Be Using
There are hundreds of tools that you can utilize in order to track your social media ROI. Some are going to be better than others. Most social media actually have their own built-in tools that businesses can use to track engagement, comments, follower behavior, reach, etc., but in some instances, you might not actually find that the information provided by these metrics are actually useful to you. Google Analytics is and probably always will be one of the best options for tracking the success of a marketing endeavor. Social Report is another useful tool, as is SproutSocial and Argyle Social.
Add the Account You Are Going to Track and Start Making Goals
Once you’ve decided which tool you’re going to use to track your progress, it’s time to add your accounts to the tool, note which items you’re going to track, and to start setting goals for improvement in those areas. Setting goals might not seem like it is a big part of measuring your social media ROI, but there is essentially no point to measuring your return on investment if you do not have goals for extending your reach or improving your engagement. Some of the best goals to track include subscriptions to your newsletter, how engaged your Twitter following is, and what keywords are being searched to find you.
Start Requesting Reports
At the very least, you should be running reports once a month. This should actually be done as regularly as possible, often at the same time that you are reporting on your other campaigns, so you can see how your social media campaign is competing with its fellows. Monthly should give you plenty of data to determine what strategies are panning out and which are falling flat. Most of the tools mentioned above should allow you to choose an option that automatically sends you an emailed report at a certain point each month. This can make it very easy and convenient to get the information you need about your social media campaign, delivered directly to your inbox.
Once you’ve started tracking your ROI, it is extremely important that you do not stop tracking. One of the reasons most campaigns fail is because those campaigns simply stop getting the attention that they need and that they deserve. If you give up on your campaign, you are going to find yourself without the information that you need in order to continue making improves. As a result, you start to stagnate. And stagnation in social media is the kiss of death.
Start checking your targets, making changes to your campaign, and testing, testing, testing. Are you meeting your goals? Exceeding them? What changes need to be made in order to meet them? What are you learning about your customer as you track their behavior in response to your social media posts?
Published on March 10, 2016
About the Author: Chris Williams
