By: Jessa Robles
Do you often wonder if your social media marketing efforts are working? Not only can social media serve as a customer service tool, but it can also help your bottom line. Here are five steps to measure social media ROI:
1. Make sure you have a plan. “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” –Alan Lakein
Without a plan, you are setting yourself up to fail. Dig deep into your company goals and strategize how you plan to tackle those goals on social media.
Some examples of goals to set would include the following:
• Increase fan engagement by 30 percent by a certain date.
• Gain 1,000 followers/fans by a certain date.
• Respond to fans within one hour during normal business hours.
• Engage with 30 non-followers on Twitter daily.
2. Research each platform before using it.
It may be tempting to join each new and shiny social media platform, but before you do so, we recommend working with your marketing and senior-level strategy team to determine:
• Is your target audience and current audience using this platform?
• Who will monitor this platform?
• What’s your strategy?
• How will you measure your success or failure?
3. Track your efforts and report them.
Tracking metrics weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually is essential to measuring your social media ROI. Some items you will want to measure include:
• Facebook engagement rates, post reach (organic + paid), page likes, fan overview/demos and when your fans are online.
• Advertising budgets, clicks, reach, impressions and actions.
• Twitter mentions, retweets, followers, engagement and influence.
One of the most valuable Facebook metrics is calculating engagement rates. To learn more about the value and steps to calculating your engagement rates, go here.
4. Review your metrics daily.
By reviewing your metrics daily, you will know what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to make adjustments for future content. Keep in mind that social media does require trial and error; something that works really well on one brand page might not work as well on another.
5. Reset goals based on performance.
Once you’ve reviewed your results and figured out what’s working well and what needs to change, you then take the time reset your goals based on performance. Maybe you gained double the amount of followers/fans you set your goal for so the next goal you set will be based on that. Find out what works for your page and keep doing it so you can increase your goals and exceed your performance levels.
Is there anything we missed that you think is important for measuring ROI?