Over the years, Social Media Marketing has fast developed a reputation for being notoriously unpredictable. Most brands today gauge Social Media from a ROI perspective and more often than not most agencies do not have a clear picture of how well their campaigns are working. In fact the most common mistakes an agency could make is to gauge a campaigns success by just its “Likes” and “Followers” when there is so much more to it than just that. According to a few reports, 80% of people who “Like” a Facebook business page never return to it again. So how does one measure Social Marketing Success? You’ll need to keep an eye out for three important factors:
- Reach
- Engagement
- Conversion
Reach: Reach is the first factor you need to take into consideration. It determines the number of people that your content has impacted. It will give you a good idea about what kind of content is working for your target audience and what isn’t. Checking Reach Metrics would include looking up Linkedin Connections, Your Twitter followers, the likes on your Facebook page, Viewers and subscribers on Youtube channel if you have one, and your blog views and visitors. Most Social Networking sites have analytical reports that you can track.
Engagement: The next step would be for you to see how the sort of engagement your content is getting. By checking out “Engagement” you will get access to vital information. Nothing spells good engagement better than valuable creative content. If your engagement level is low, keep an eye on the content that’s going off your pages. To track Engagement Metrics, you could keep an eye on Clicks on links on your posts, RT’s, Mentions and Messages on Twitter as well as the Shares, Likes and Comments on Facebook. The same applies to your LinkedIn content as well. Several third party applications can be used to track engagement levels.
Conversion: We’ve taken care of the Reach of your content. We’ve seen how well your content is doing with your target audience. Now its time to fry the biggest fish of them all: conversion. The first and most important thing you have to do with regards to conversions is to make your website the mothership of all Social Media Content. Make sure that whatever content you are pushing out ultimately directs back to your website because that is the business end of your campaign. Your website must be well equipped to handle the incoming traffic brought through by promotions through Social Platforms to convert those leads generated into sales. For measuring Conversions, it is essential you integrate your website with Google Analytics to keep an eye on the activity unfolding on your website. After having done so, pick “Campaign Tracking” in GA Tracking and set up links that you can track to various social media platforms. Use bitly or a tiny.url to shorten your links. Finally, set up “Goal tracking” on GA. By doing so, you track all the online conversions that are taking place. This is the final step you need to take in your goal of tracking your ROI from your social media run campaigns. By keeping a lookout on these three factors alone, the success ratio of your Social Media Campaign will rise drastically. In the meantime, for all things Social Media Marketing, keep it locked to Simplify360.