- Do you have a plan?
- How are you going to measure your success?
Without these two strategies in place, there is no way you will be able to effectively decide if social media is a fit for your company. A survey conducted by R2integrated reported to eMarketer that, “although one-half of respondents said they had a social strategy in place—considered critical for success in the social space—only 35% thought they were making money.”
With that being said, they also went on to say that, “respondents who said they profited were twice as likely to have a formal strategy.” Proving you need to have a strategy if you want to see a positive ROI for your social media efforts.
Tracking your ROI for social media campaigns are very similar to traditional marketing campaigns. If you are testing the effectiveness of how well your Twitter followers will click on your links for example, you should set up a specific landing page for each links. Doing this will allow you to monitor who is clicking your links and in turn will show when your tweets are most effective.
If you are new to social media, and need your findings explained in a more traditional sense, then EmailData Source may have a tool for you. Their tool allows marketers to measure Twitter’s impact on traditional brand marketing perspectives such as
- Reach
- Frequency
- Effectiveness
Other tools to help you track your re-tweets and @ replies for your business is TweetStats and TwitterFriends. By tracking how many re-tweets and @ replies your business gets, will again help you determine how many people are listening to you as well as sharing your information to others.
Word of mouth marketing is very powerful, and a re-tweet is just the same, if not more powerful than someone telling their friend about your product. Making sure you measure the effectiveness of your tweets, could in turn help you decide when to market certain products and how effective promotions can be.
Besides having a Facebook page (recently changed to people “like” your page not a “fan” of your page) you can also implement fun quizzes and contests. These types of tactics can help with lead generation efforts (asking for information before they begin a quiz or contest) as well as help you measure your ROI.
Just remember it all comes down to how well you track your results. This is the main thing for any marketing campaign. With social media still new to many, it is hard to figure out how to effectively gauge your work.
Make sure you also stay active on your online networks. Simply throwing up a Twitter account and Facebook page will not show you an effective ROI. People are listening to you for information as well you are there to listen to them.
With the right balance of measurement and activity, you should be able to receive a great level of ROI, just remember to plan and measure.
Shannon Suetos is an expert writer on voip phone systems based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as voip phones at Resource Nation.
