As more and more companies continue to jump on social media, it is becoming part of most companies' marketing strategies. Your task will be to prove your social media investment is truly warranted. You'll need to track how social is influencing every interaction you have with your clients. So how exactly do you measure return on investment (ROI)?
1. Align Social Media with Your Business Goals
You need to tie in your social media goals with your business goals. If you are trying to bring in a set number of leads this month, then make a goal for the number of leads your social media efforts should generate.
One of your goals could be to increase landing page conversion by 15%. Make sure you’re tracking the conversion rate of people who land on those pages through social channels. If you already on social media, now is a good time to perform an audit on those existing social media performance to establish baseline targets, then set appropriate goals for improvement.
Key examples of social media metrics to track include: (Look past "Likes, +1s, and Retweets")
- Reach
- Site traffic
- Leads generated
- Sign-ups and conversions
- Revenue generated
Not aligning your social efforts with your business goals could be a costly oversight, which many businesses immediately jumping into social media unfortunately experience. Setting up specific social goals will keep your efforts working toward the overall goals of your company.
2. Tracking Tools to Measure Social Media ROI
There are a lot of tools available to you other than just the insights each platform gives you.
Website:
- Google Analytics - Can help you determine which social platforms are driving traffic and which ones aren't.
Social Media:
- Sprout Social - While this is not a free platform. Sprout Social allows you to look at insights and manage and schedule post for FB, TW, G+, and LinkedIn.
- Hubspot - This is a powerful platform that tracks everything from reach, interactions, leads, and visits to your site from social. You can also break it down by campaigns and platforms.
- Iconosquare - Gives you fantastic insights on Instagram profiles.
3. calculating Your ROI
Once you are tracking your social media results, it's time to start calculating if you are reaching your goals. A big problem I see in some strategies is companies create a plan, then let it go. A social campaign is not a billboard, they actually have very short life spans. You need to stay on top of the data, as it happens. Choose a time frame that works for you, and stick to it. You can often have reports sent to your email inbox on specific days of the week so you don’t have to even remember to pull reports yourself.
4. Analyze and Always Improve
The one thing about social media is that it is never static. You should be using your results to see what is working and what isn't working, to better your social media strategy, meet your goals, and increase the value over time. If you are not optimizing your strategy then you are just wasting time and efforts.
Conclusion
Whether you are new or already on social media. You need to make sure that you are aligning business goals with your social media goals. Setup tracking tools to make sure you are tracking the results of your efforts, which leads you to calculating your results, and finally down to analyzing what is working for you.
Comments