Expert Advice: Measuring Social Media Success

Let’s say you have a beautifully designed website and have implemented both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) techniques with a lot of planning. And it is showing some results in the form of increased online sales. Have you measured whether the methods are producing the anticipated returns? And how do you measure the efficacy of social media techniques?

As far as your knowledge goes, there are no set parameters to check the success of social media techniques for business enterprises. Measuring the success of any advertising strategy can be very complicated and may not necessarily give accurate answers. Knowing whether the SMO tools you have employed are influencing minds and creating brand value for your goods and services may be difficult to quantify. So here are some expert tips for measuring social media success:

What you should measure

When you want to create brand value for your products rather than just sell, a new approach is essential when implementing and measuring SMO tools. Reaching out to potential customers is the way to go. Collecting and collating random information about Returns on Investment (ROI) is not going to help. It is first necessary to know which data should be collected and then measured to make the exercise worthwhile. You should focus on measuring the following:

• Time spent in creating the interest of potential customers,
• Expenditure on contacting the potential buyers,
• Time and money spent in follow-up with potential customers,
• Time spent in holding their attention and obtaining feedback,
• The number of potential customers who actually transacted online purchases,
• The number of referrals the existing customers has provided.
• The number of repeat customers who have displayed brand loyalty.

Ways to measure social media success

There are some fantastic tools that can help you gauge whether your social media strategies are working effectively and producing the desired results:

Google Analytics – Using this service will help you keep a track of the activity on your website. It is an analytic tool that collates very comprehensive information. With Google Analytics you can check how many web users visit your site each day. How they heard about your company, the demographics of the visitors, their attention span, how many transacted online business, etc. are the other details collected.

My Top Tweet – This is another tool that analyzes the success of your social media marketing techniques. You can find out how many of your tweets received the maximum re-tweets. It also calculates the top 10 tweets that were shared the most. You can also find out which ones were re-tweeted the most. This tool has dual benefit. You get upfront opinion on your own brands and firsthand information on your competitors’ brands.

Wildfire’s Monitor – This is a superb tool that measures the effect of your presence on Facebook and Twitter. It measures the number of check-ins, likes and followers for each page, whether it is yours or that of your competitors.

Klout Score – When you want to know how many potential customers you have been able to influence, this is the tool you should use. It also measures the extent of your influence and the expanse of the network you have influenced. It maps your activity for 90 days on social media, the time you spent, the effect it had on other web users, etc. This can then be cross-referenced with the increase in online sales during that period.

HootSuite – If you are facing a major dilemma with multiple brands requiring varied strategies which you need to monitor regularly, this analytic tool is your best bet. It tracks activity of numerous accounts and sites and collates data in one place that you can access easily.

The reason why you have implemented social media techniques is to drive in greater inbound traffic to your website. With these measurement tools, you can find out whether you have acquired a new customer; whether you have sustained the customer’s attention; whether the interest resulted in the transaction of an online sale; whether the methods have generated brand loyalty; whether the existing buyers have referred others who have added to the customer base; etc. The analytics will help you quantify your present success and help you plan your future marketing strategies.