How do you monitor of even justify the ROI of your social media management efforts? Generally, for businesses, the success behind Social Media is proven by measuring the likes, views, subscriptions, follows, tweets, re-pins and retweets (etc) because they are the easiest figures to study. These figures will give you a graph on how your management is progressing, normally a correctly managed Social Media presence will see an ever increasing following and interaction. But should you be digging further to really try and extract a stronger justification for spending your time on Social Media ~ How else can you study it’s ROI?
- Study Times. It is very important to realise that Social Media is 24/7 and that certain types of audiences have tendencies to use varied platforms at different times of the day / week. They also reactive differently to ways that updates on Social Media are conversed, some may prefer direct links to sales / promotions where other may prefer educational content to drive their interest.
- Monitor Web Traffic. Us, as a Social Media management company, endlessly see new clients who are either experiencing bad web development or if they have managed to build a satisfactory website, they are not tracking the traffic it is receiving. A very big mistake if you are spending on on line marketing as you need to be fully aware on how your endeavours are working by how much web traffic you are receiving, what is the bounce rate etc. You should look at adopting Google Analytics or other free web traffic solutions such as statcounter.com which will tell you how people are coming to your website, where they are coming from, how long they are staying for and what pages they are viewing etc.
- Question new customers. Again, many companies simply see a new enquiry as another figure towards their monthly target, but in reality, it is vitally important to research the route that the client too to get to your business. This is where Social Media ROI can really be seen to be working as more and more customers are initially finding companies via the likes of Facebook and Twitter – Companies that are active on Social Media platforms have a greater chance to be found during their ‘potential customers’ social time on the internet.
- Include Social Media links in everyone on line activity. Really study the power of Social Media by giving it the best opportunity. Remember that not only a few icons on your website is the only option, make sure your website is responsive for Social Media by offering share / like buttons throughout, include links on email stationary, newsletters etc.
“Once you have adopted all of the above, your Social Media management skills are targeting your audience at the right times, you are monitoring and acting upon the stats to your website, you question the route clients are taking to get to your business and you have maximised the exposure of your Social Media channels on all of your on line marketing activity you should then be able to measure your Social Media Activity.” Marketme.co.uk