We all know that when you are setting goals that they need to be SMART. They need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. What many people don’t get with Social media is how to make sure that their goals are measurable. How do you measure something as intangible as Social Media?
Perhaps some of the old rules don’t count but there are plenty of indicators that can help you measure and assess social media success. Here are some ways that you can measure ROI from social media activities. They represent only a fraction of the tools available to you but they are some of the easiest ones to implement.
Number of Followers/ Fans- The easiest metric from Facebook and Twitter is the number of Fans or Followers that you have. You can also look at whether these numbers are increasing over time. (Obviously you want them to increase and you need to look at what you are doing wrong if these numbers are decreasing.)
Post Comments and Blog Comments- Another great metric to look at is comments on Facebook posts, comments on blog posts and @ reply comments on Twitter. You can assess these comments numerically and qualitatively. A large number of comments can indicate that you are successfully engaging in conversation but you also need to look at the tone and message of these comments. Are they positive or negative tweets?
Number of mentions on Twitter- A good way to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns is to look at the number of people who are talking about you on Twitter. Who is mentioning you? How often are you, or one of your posts, being mentioned on Twitter? Are the comments being made positive or negative?
Number of readers of a Blog post- The number of visitors to a blog can be tracked, as can the source of the visitors. Measuring the number of visitors can help you assess the relative success or failure of your blog posts.
Social media is something you should do as a business owner but not something that you ‘just do.’ You need to be strategic about your goals, you need to be strategic about what you are trying to achieve and then you need to measure whether your chosen activities are helping you to achieve your goals. If it is not working you need to change what you are doing and try something different.
Good luck!