Social marketing. Everyone’s at it. But what are the results?
Tom Chapman’s excellent article Social Media: Measuring ROI supplies marketers with all the basic tools to justify investment in #SM:
- measure website visits using metrics software (eg Google Analytics)
- measure Twitter follower growth trends with Twitter Counter or similar (for example stats from a Bristol-based agency I worked with)
- use Facebook Insights to understand your fans (I am a novice here. The best starter info I found is on SocialMediaExaminer, unsurprisingly)
So that’s one level of reporting. Remember, all this social media stuff may be baffling or seen as a ‘flash in the pan’ by your MD. As a marketer using the new rules of marketing and PR, you need to justify the resource and time you are expending. Chapman quotes Oliver Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) in this regard.
To know the value of your social activity, plot the data gathered above against other business numbers: awareness, enquiries, downloads, newsletter/RSS sign ups, trials, appointments, sales. Compare the timelines.
- Can you spot any correlation?
- How does this look compared to the marketing you did before?
- Is your social marketing working well with any ongoing traditional outbound marketing?
It’s not easy, and it’s not perfect, but it’s the only way the MD will be happy.
