Social media promises almost endless possibilities, especially when you consider what may happen in the near future. In fact, it is at the top of the list of different technologies that will be used more in the next coming years. Because of this, everybody has something to gain with the use of social media, and this makes it all the more important to track and measure social media response. Here are three different ways of measuring social media response.
ROI. Getting back everything you spent and more on a marketing strategy is one of the main goals when running a business. Some sources would assert that it is entirely possible to measure ROI of social media strategies using relatively indirect methods; other experts, however, assert that assessing ROI for social media simply cannot be done. Either way, though, return on investment is a good way of telling whether what you are doing is working or failing miserably.
Out of the different reasons for measuring ROI, the most important would probably be the chance for optimization. It’s something you can do continuously, endlessly improving your technique for better ROI results every time. To an extent, it is a trial and error labor where you just try out little adjustments until you get to that sweet spot where all the different factors work together. Another thing: there is no chance for improvement and expansion if you’re not getting the right ROI.
Traffic and activity. Google Analytics is one of the most common and popular ways of measuring traffic and activity to a website, but the question is why web traffic is important in the first place. The answer to this is that this gives business owners a general idea on what kind of news works best in attracting people and which topics generate the most buzz among customers. What has the most likes, the most active page, and the most positive feedback? That information is gold.
Google Analytics is just a single tool, but it has quite a lot of different aspects, meaning there are a number of different ways that you can make the most out of Google Analytics. You would need to learn several things, starting from how to gather data, interpreting the statistics and traffic numbers, and finally knowing how to put these to good use. It is more work than many would expect, but it’s a necessary evil for business metrics.
Customer response. The best way to get helpful information is to get it directly from the customers themselves. Through comments, surveys, and online feedback forms you can determine which aspects of your service need some more work. For example, you can find out if the methods of communication you provide are easy for customers or horribly inconvenient.
Which social media site do you most prefer using? Is there a specific site you want us to use that would be most convenient for customers? How did you come across our website? These are just a few of the questions that you could ask in order to gauge your social media proficiency. There’s always room for improvement, and getting the opinion of the people who spend the most time on the internet gives you insight on which social media aspects you are getting right and wrong.
Social media is a very complex tool and there is not just one way of going about using it. These are three possible ways of measuring social media response but certainly not all.