Measuring Success in Social Media

from Hinge Marketing Services Blog 15 Nov 13 enhance by Peter/CXO Wiz4biz 11/14

Measuring Social Media success. Now we know what we want to measure. Let’s determine how we will measure this social media success. Putting new followers, more shares & comments on posts aside, we can determine the tools & methods we will use to get there. Here are ways to show your firm that it has met each goal:

1. Conversion. Use custom Landing pages & Web Analytics to know where your “qualified” traffic is coming from and what actions these visitors are taking. If you have an upcoming Webinar, create landing pages dedicated to each social network & use Google Analytics to determine if that traffic is registering for the event. You can now measure: Inbound traffic from a particular social network, Event registrations, & the Ratio of visitors to registrants. If you have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software tied to your firm’s site, you can see who has registered and your business development team can follow up on those warm leads, before it is too late.

2. Thought Leadership, is one of the most over-used phrases in Social Media Marketing, but it is tangible. You can use manual searches, work-flow tools like HootSuite, and sophisticated software like Radian6 or Sysomos to measure Share of Voice & sentiment. Share of voice is simply how often your brand is mentioned online in relation to your competitors. If you “dominate” the social media conversation, then you should see that traffic & conversion you are looking for and have an understanding of where your firm is positioned within your industry. Sentiment is harder to measure, but with tools, searches & effort, you can determine if the conversation around your firm is positive, neutral or (hopefully not) negative.

3. New Business. In addition to measuring qualified traffic & the actions that visitors take, your firm should use a CRM tool to capture those leads to show that social media can drive sales. Like a tree falling in the woods, if you can’t track a lead & follow up, then does it really exist? Your firm should set a goal of X new clients by QY. Hit it and your social media marketing program will continue to receive a budget and will be seen as a primary lead generation resource.

Summary. These are the Core Components for measuring Social Media Success. You should quantify and report on followers, likes, shares, mentions, comments etc. These concepts should still be measured, but just be prepared for the C-level executives to ask what that progress means to your firm. And you’d better have the answer or else . . .

Comments: Do you have any other means to measure Social Media Success?