Metrics to Measure Social Media ROI

Most businesses are still trying to figure out how to measure the return on investment of social media. There are many new metrics and performance indicators related to social media, like FB fans, retweets and so on. The traditional metrics which are easier to track are traffic, leads, impressions, revenue and so on. You can get info on these factors with analytics tools.

So let’s take a look at a few of these metrics:

• Social Page views: refers to how many views your FB page received. This is actually more valuable than page views on your own site.

• Video views: The more the merrier!

• Engagement rate refers to the likes, shares and comments your posts or images receive. You get more interaction when you post stuff that interests the reader. This is an indication of how many people are interested in what you do.

• Retweet rates: How many of your followers retweet your posts will tell you how many are watching what you do.

• Social referrals: You can see how much of your traffic is actually coming because of your social media engagements; measure how many leads you’re getting directly because of social networking sites, and how much it aids your conversion.

• You can also check your FB reach or Twitter impression reach with the help of their APIs. Your FB reach can be classified into organic, paid and viral. It will help you compare your performance compared to the previous month or week. The Twitter API won’t show you the exact number of people who read your tweets but you can get an idea about the impact they have. You can also see who retweets your posts; if they have many followers and are influential, you could try to establish a relationship with them, contribute to their blogs and so on.

• You can find out how many people are actually talking about your page and stuff you post; the FB buzz metric will show you this. With a tool like Google alerts you can also check if your posts, tweets and photos are being discussed in the social media elsewhere than on your page.

• You should measure your social networks in totality, vis-a-vis other campaigns, but also against each other; find out if its FB or Twitter that’s driving more traffic; which site induces conversion, and so on. This way you can decide which network is the most helpful.

• Track your visitor to lead conversion rate. Check how many visitors actually turn into leads and compare this data on a monthly basis.

• Next you need to track how many of these leads actually end up purchasing from you. This will give you an idea of what leads are the most likely to become customers. You can also compare their spending levels with customers who came from other campaigns.

• Track how much time it takes for a social media lead to go thru the sales cycle; you can come up with ways to shorten this time once you have the info.

Most entrepreneurs wonder if the effort and money spent on social media will bear fruit. Measuring these factors will surely give them the answers they need.

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