Everyone (including clients) want a quantifiable ROI for their social media strategy that revolves around a dollar sign within a relatively short amount of time.
True data on social media return is usually in a longer cycle then the typical “cause & effect” data capture. What I mean is that you can’t measure results in brand perception, over-all marketing efficiency and positive name recognition in a formula of a week or even month long cause and effect formula.
My belief is that it is more accurate to emphasize measuring data that is based on your strategy effectiveness that lead to revenue rather than just the end result of just revenue itself. That is, focus entirely on what you’re trying to accomplish with your social media program or campaign and then identify the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will tell you over time, whether you’re making progress to your ultimate goal.
What Really Goes Into The 3 Main Measurables
While small businesses and new companies to the social media arena are tempted to over analyze their short term social media ROI, they really need to focus on identifying KPIs that will provide the road-map to business objectives your aiming for.
There are basically 3 kinds of applied measurables that you should be focusing on:
- You brand perception: It’s why Visa sponsors the Olympics and why Coca-Cola sponsors the Special Olympics,. It’s why you’re on Twitter. It’s about maintaining or enhancing your brand’s reputation, perception and visibility. So your impacting KPIs that inform factors like customer satisfaction score or likeliness to buy.
- You marketing efficiency: You should be looking at your website, optimize for SEO and study where your traffic is coming from: Twitter, Facebook, blogs. (Twitter, btw, now drives more than 10 percent of the New York Times’ traffic. Facebook drives at least 13 percent of MSN’s and Yahoo’s traffic.) Study your analytics. I strongly recommend having a web analytics tracking system on your website. It’s all about reach. And that means you may need to track the little ticky-tacky metrics that add up to painting a fuller picture. Some of those niche sources you will find can be responsible for more conversions than you think because of the targeting rather than pure numbers.
- Long-Term Revenue growth: It’s about leads, lead qualification and the niche markets they’re coming from that lead to sales revenue. So hone your marketing program to identify the people who will ultimately generate sales. Measure downloads, registrations, new subscribers, optins etc and a host of other indicators that will shine a light onto revenue growth patterns.
Again, the performance indicators need to be the real areas of focus. If you continue to push toward improving those, the increase in long-term revenue will follow. It all tells a story so measure each area and tweak accordingly. This is one of the largest opportunities for success and refusing to do so has been shown to be a key culprit for social media marketing failure. You have to research, start with what you know then analyze and continually optimize in order to truly be successful in the long term.
Your coach & fan
Patrick Daugherty
The “Biz Coach”
CEO of Learn2earn it now Training & Support
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Creator of: “The Success Steps For Building Wealth Online” The step by step training program that teaches aspiring internet entrepreneurs how to earn money online by launching an internet marketing home business. Learn SEO along with Internet marketing training, affiliate marketing programs, effective social media marketing, getting free traffic and everything you need to know to design any online home business opportunity to achieve your financial goals.
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Great article. These measurable items are the most important, however more details are needed for each one. This is spot on, and then the reader can go into more depth and detail themselves. Follow up articles on those processes would be helpful.
Again, what it comes down to is commitment. You say you are ready, and you have shown you are able, but just how willing are you?
Cheers.
Chris Kulbaba
Hey. Very nice post. thanks for that. Check out the website I found on how to make money with facebook.
Really nice article.
Branding is indeed very important, especially where there is so little left for differentiation.
Great Article , We all looking for tools to use on line to make money and that was helpful .
Astonishingly insightful cheers, I do think your audience could very well want a whole lot more blog posts such as this carry on the good effort.