Guest post from Jonathan Leger
Social media is a modern phenomenon that presents incredible marketing potential. The problem lies in knowing just how to harness that potential to get the results you want. That’s why it’s so important to have a game plan in place for measuring the results of your social media efforts. In this article, we will share some doable tips and provide advice on keeping track of and increasing your return on investment (ROI) in social media marketing. Read on to learn more.
Six Smart Strategies For Assessing & Improving Social Media Marketing ROI
1. Set goals! Before you begin, decide exactly what you want your results to be. In that way, you will have some sort of guideline in place for measuring your success. Decide how much effort you want to focus on concerns such as lead generation, brand awareness, networking and reputation building. Set a target for the precise number of leads, fans and followers you want to generate in a given time period.
2. Make good use of tracking codes. Be sure to include tracking codes in every part of your social media marketing campaign. That way you will be able to tell which parts of your campaign are generating the most interest and you can tweak accordingly.
3. Do a thorough cost analysis on each lead. Determine how much each conversion costs as compared with how much you earn on each lead you generate.
4. Perform thorough demographics analysis. Be sure to use all the tools put at your disposal by Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to determine who is showing the most interest in your product or service and why they are attracted. Track interest from start to finish to determine the interests of your visitors, their location, age and gender. This information will help you target your best prospects.
5. Provide plenty of opportunity for feedback. Ask questions and encourage discussion. Create surveys, questionnaires and contests to engage your visitors. These activities will provide you with valuable information about what it takes to encourage and excite members of your target audience. It will also help you avoid doing things that will discourage them.
6. Find out how your visitors get to you. Use tools such as those provided by Alexa or Google Analytics to determine where your visitors come from and where they are headed. This will help you perfect your content to both attract and direct them.
Is That All There Is To It?
While quantitative measurement of the success of social media marketing campaigns is important, it is also necessary to understand that qualitative results are even more important. The six simple techniques discussed above can help you get people to your social media pages where you can direct them in ways that will help you increase your ROI, but there are also many important aspects of customer service you should practice to optimize your results.
Remember that a very big part of social media involves making friends and building trust. There is a certain amount of finesse involved in this and success can be elusive if you are too focused on your business. You have to learn to set just the right balance between building authentic relationships with your followers and mentioning your product or service naturally and in an encouraging manner.
With social media, you can build your reputation as a trustworthy human being who has the best interests of others at heart. This may take a while and it is difficult to measure precise results. In this area, you will simply have to believe that with the passage of time, your consistent honest and trustworthy behavior will eventually pay off.
Frequent Involvement = Higher Numbers!
A successful social media marketing campaign will result in increased numbers of followers on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other social media sites. It will also result in increased and positive activity. If you are simply attracting people to “follow” you and then never hearing from them again, your campaign is not successful. Your goal should be to have lively, active interactions on all your social media pages.
Be sure to visit your pages frequently and update your information on a regular basis. Create positive, interesting posts that engage your followers and encourage them to open up. Always keep in mind that you are working on building an ongoing relationship based in trust. Even if your potential customers are on the other side of the world, this is possible and desirable thanks to the internet.
Think Of It As Building A Long-Term Relationship!
Don’t become discouraged if your sales figures do not climb as rapidly as your social media interactions. Your profits may not initially be an indicator of your success. Social interaction is a delicate activity. Success takes time to develop.
Focus on courting your target audience and building trust. This is a long-term investment that will surely pay off handsomely with the passage of time. By tracking and monitoring all of your activities closely, you will be able to look back through your records and see which of your efforts had the most success. This will allow you to repeat these efforts and improve your rate of conversion and ROI in a steady and reliable manner.
Jonathan Leger has been a successful Internet Marketer for over 11 years. He owns an SEO Tools suite at KeywordCanine.com.
