Social media has become a large part of business marketing strategies, both in SEO and in gaining new customers directly through the social media sites themselves. As in all marketing, measuring effectiveness is important to understand the ROI or return on investment of social media marketing as well as its effects on other factors such as SEO. By measuring response, it is possible to tailor the way that social media marketing is used to ensure it is having the largest positive effect on gaining new customers and increasing website traffic.
Factors To Measure in Social Media Marketing
Social media is a integral part of marketing online and needs to be constantly monitored and measured to ensure that it is having the positive effect that is expected. By looking at certain metrics, campaigns can be altered and bolstered as needed to ensure both ROI and SEO needs are being met. Some factors that should be considered are:
Engagement Having a reader click on your blog article or start watching your YouTube advertisements can all be measured. However, more valuable is where they came from and, in the case of YouTube, whether they watched the entire video. If they did not, you also need to know where they stopped watching.
Reach Just as SEO efforts track how many potential people can be reached by certain keyword searches and actual new visitors generated to a site, social media marketing can be measured by reach as well. Likes, followers, friends, updates and even subscribers to blog feeds can all give numbers that show potential reach of social media marketing.
Influence Another metric to look at is how social media is influencing trends or sentiment of the audience. By doing analysis on keywords that are either positive or negative toward campaigns or brands, a business can obtain a realistic measure of how the audience is responding to the output within social media.
Measuring social media for ROI is not an exact science. It requires digging deeper into metrics to see how each affects another. However, by looking at reach and engagement in social media campaigns, it can give an overview into how the time and effort into social media is positively affecting other avenues, such as SEO and increased customer spending online.
Marketing campaigns are labor intensive and an expensive part of running a business. Just like a business would run international background checks on new employees to ensure they are a good investment, they should also be monitoring and measuring social media campaigns to ensure they are worth the time and money spent on them. By using tools available, businesses can change, alter or increase social media marketing techniques so that they positively influence the most important aspect of any business, gaining new customers.