If you aren’t using social media for your business, you’re doing something wrong. To put it into perspective, Statista reported that of the 3.17 billion people using the internet, 2.3 billion are active social media users.
However, simply creating an account on the most popular social media platforms won’t instantly move you out of the fools’ category. Social media marketing takes strategy, persistence, time, effort and measurement. To ensure your social media efforts are paying off, and more importantly, to determine which tactics work and bring the highest ROI, here are five key metrics to watch closely.
Conversions
Every company wants to see conversions. Conversions show the number of people who took the extra step and entered your sales funnel via your social media page. This can be gauged by tracking website traffic, online sales, registrations completed, subscription forms submitted, etc.
Search Volume
What better way to determine if your social media marketing strategy is working than using search volume metrics? Search volume allows you to see how many people are searching for your company on search engines. This is an important tactic because you’ll be creating an online presence, and as a result, consumers will be searching for your company online.
Brand Presence, Image and Engagement
Simply having a social media account won’t get you the results you’re after. In order to capitalize on these modern-day marketing tools, you need to learn how to use them to build a strong online presence in order to further engage with your customers. Furthermore, not all interactions are positive and you need a strategy to address negative feedback. Tools such as Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, Google’s Me on the Web Tool, and Social Mention allow you to monitor your online reputation in seconds.
Followers and likes
One of the easiest ways to keep track of your social media marketing is by checking your number of followers and likes. If you have a high number of followers and they’re consistently growing, your social media campaign is essentially working.
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all offer analytics right on each platform. However, you can also use third-party tools such as the Epoxy app, Klout widget or Social Blue Book website to track your followers, likes and social media presence as a whole.
Return on Investment
The best thing about social media marketing is that you don’t have to spend a dime to see a return on investment. It’ll take time and effort, but it can be a cost-efficient marketing tool. You can complement your time and effort with paid advertisements or by hiring a social media marketer to capitalize using your social media strategy. Either way, whether time or money spent, you want to make sure it’s worth it.
