If you search the internet you will find a lot of information regarding tracking social media and ROI. ROI will always be the standard in determining the ultimate success, but many metrics will provide an indication of whether or not you are on the right track. In working with our clients, we’ve focused on tracking five key performance indicators to help determine if we are on the right track.
Community: The first and easiest to track is building communities on the various social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Traffic: You can track traffic using tools such as Google Analytics or shortened URL services such as Bitly. There is a tremendous amount of information available and you need to decide the tools that best provide a means of benchmarking and tracking results.
Conversations/Engagement: Another key statistic you can track is how your communities respond to your efforts. You can track the number of engagements on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can tally up the likes and comments on Facebook, Retweets on Twitter, and comments on Discussion Posts and News Articles in LinkedIn or use social listening tools.
Leads: If you want to track leads you’re going to have to implement some means of tracking results. You can use tracking URL’s, specific campaign forms, lead tracking phone numbers, or simply ask those who contact you how they found you. These are just a few of the tracking options available.
Conversions: The last piece of the puzzle is to quantify the dollars produced by your activity. Once again, the methods above can be used to do so.
These methods track Causation results. You communicated a message and the specific results were generated directly from this activity.
You can also use Correlation to track results. Suppose that prior to launching your campaign you averaged 500 people per month to your site. Since launching your campaign your traffic has increased to 700, 900, and 1,100 visits per month over the previous three months. You can correlate the increase to the beginning of the campaign.
Correlation doesn’t generate as specific of a metric as Causation, but it still is a means of evaluating your efforts.
If you’ve struggled with tracking your social media efforts these five KPI will help you start to measure your efforts. Just remember that in the end the only true score is ROI.
Social Media Sonar provides the following four resources for FREE… 1. The Blog, 2. The Online Marketing/Social Media Blueprint, 3. Conversion Rate Optimization Guide, 4. Resource Center. If these help you implement your own online marketing program, great. We love helping people. If you decide you need some help, great. We love new clients. Contact Us if we can help you.
