I’ve heard a lot of people complaining that there is a lack of measurement and ROI tracking around the use of social media.
It’s not that hard to at least track the basics. There are now a plethora of tools for social media monitoring and you can get started by tracking trends and setting basic targets/KPI’s & benchmarks around these.
I have set up a social media dashboard or KPI report which helps me with tracking social media metrics for my blog and in a business context a set up like this can also help you to measure ROI on your time spent on participating in social media activities.
The below example is a very basic dashboard but it does let me attribute an increase in site traffic or other metrics back to social media campaigns/tweets/social media activity. If you’re selling a product or service you can work out your average cost per acquisition from social media channels by working out your average conversion rate, average revenue per sale or lead and the cost of getting that lead i.e. the value of your time spent in social media, cost for creative and other associated costs.
Example: Social Media Measurement Dashboard & KPI’s
Note: This is sample data
Social Media Measurement Dashboard Example
Evaluating the quality of traffic received from different social media sites allows you to concentrate your time and efforts on the sites that are going to bring you the highest quality traffic. I.e. if someone coming from Facebook spends roughly twice as long on your site or the average amount that a Facebook user purchases through your site is 20% more than a Twitter user then it would make sense to concentrate more time, effort and money on your Facebook presence.
Another useful metric is the % age of new visitors from each traffic source. I.e. Is this site/portal mostly sending you repeat loyal customers that you could encourage to visit your site directly or are you attracting brand new visitors that have never heard of your site before. Which type of user is more valuable for your business and how do you want to encourage them get to your site in the future?
Useful Social Media & Traffic Monitoring Tools:
- Google Analytics or other web analytics tools such as Omniture
- Google Alerts - set up alerts for mentions of your brand or product across the web
- Social Mention - the Social Media Search Engine
- Twitter search/Twitter hashtag searches
- Facebook - track new fans/friends and referrals
- YouTube Analytics - if you’re tracking video
- Google Trends for Websites and Insights for Search
