Measuring Social Media Marketing |

Measuring Social Media Marketing

From a business perspective, one of the most compelling arguments against investing resources into social media marketing is the lack of quantifiable performance metrics. Especially, since for most small and medium-sized businesses, they just don’t have the time, money and personnel to take advantage of some of the more advanced ways to track social media performance.

Furthermore, social media, as a marketing channel, is quite different than running advertisements, sending out direct mail, or producing radio or TV spots, or for that matter, any traditional type of marketing media.

By it’s very nature, social media is about engaging audiences in communication, not just sending out one-way promotional messages.

Regardless, the most fundamental ways to measure the results of social media efforts are the same for any type marketing.

Marketing Metrics

♦ How much does it cost? Just like with any business investment, the concept of how much it costs is fundamental to its benefits. And just because a significant amount of social media activity can be generated for no cost, or low cost, does not make it cost-effective. There’s labor involved in writing blog posts; creating/uploading videos to YouTube; keeping Facebook and Linkedin pages updated (in addition to making them engaging); and using Twitter. In this regard, a simple approach to controlling the labor cost of social media marketing is to simply limit the time investment to whatever is workable for your business.

♦ Feedback. The first responses you are likely to receive from your social media efforts will not be sales. It will be comments (good and bad) about your products, services and even the value and quality of your social media communications. This needs to be monitored and quantified in terms of how much overall feedback is generated, as well as how much is positive and negative, and even how engaged your audience is. For example, if your audience is communicating very thoughtfully and/or passionately about what you are saying, that’s an indication that your social media efforts are connecting with your audience.

♦ Prospects and customers. This is where the rubber meets the road: but at best, it’s wet and slippery. Does your social media activity actually generate more leads and customers? Unfortunately, this isn’t always clear. Sure, if you put up a special discount on a Facebook page, the resulting business can be attributed to social media. But other than such very specific examples, what about customers who are introduced to your website or business by way of Facebook or Twitter who then become prospects or customers? Although there are some advanced ways to measure this, they are typically beyond the scope of what a small or medium-sized business wants to be concerned about. For the purposes of this article, it’s useful to at least be able to determine if ANY prospects or customers are being generated via social media. Having said that, generating more traffic by way of social media is a contributing factor to more sales, even if such sales do not result with a first visit.

♦ Revenues. Of course the most important point of any marketing is measured at the bottom line of business finances: Have sales gone up? And if so, how much? And even though all the revenues from social media may not be attributed as such, can ANY revenue at all be quantified as resulting from social media?

Social Media Marketing Conclusion

This article is not intended as an argument against utilizing social media to expand business. But it is intended to lay bare that there are costs to using social media – even if only in labor – and that the results are not as readily quantifiable as other marketing media, such as paid advertising.

It’s also important to be aware that social media efforts may not yield immediate results in the same way as paid advertising. In fact, social media efforts should be contemplated and measured over a longer period of time. If your business is going to test the waters of social media by attempting to engage an audience for, let’s say, 30 days, “to see what happens,” the reality is that not much will likely occur and your activity will be apparently for naught.

To utilize social media effectively for marketing purposes, a longer time commitment is necessary to yield workable results.

And if you really want to use social media effectively, thinking in terms of an overall strategic implementation of a variety of social media channels to support your business goals would be an ideal. And in that regard, getting some professional help would be the best way to customize such an approach to maximize the benefits for your specific business.