With every social media campaign should come a strategic plan to accompany it. Not only do you have to know what you want your end goal to be, but you must also know how you plan on getting there. While the plan is not likely to happen as you wish, it is still good to have so that you can set standards and measure progress.
Measuring progress is exactly what I wanted to point out in this article. How can I measure social media efforts? As every social media campaign should have a plan, every social media plan must also have objectives. These specific objectives will give you something that must be measured throughout your campaign. Lastly, you have to actually measure and keep track of your objectives and initiatives to make sure that you are working on the plan and reaching goals.
Here are 3 main tips to measure your social media effots.
- Create Measurable Objectives – As stated earlier, one of the main starting points is to create a list of measurable objectives. Without objectives, there is nothing to measure. You may have an idea of things you should keep track of, but having these defined objectives are key. You can start with 5 Common Social Media Objectives that we have previously discussed. These objectives should be followed up by strategies and tactics for each so that you have precise action steps to follow in your normal business operations.
- Determine What to Measure – You will have a very good idea of exactly what to measure once you create your objectives. Each objective should have something like… increase Facebook Fan Page conversation to 5 per week by July 31st. When you state the number of conversation, you now know that you should keep tabs of the number of conversations created within your Fan Page. You can even get an idea of What you might measure here
- Monitor, Measure and Record – First thing you want to do is setup a way to obtain measurable results. You can do this with a number of tools. There are paid tools such as Radian6 or Snythesio with extensive numbers and metrics. You can also create a listening system with many of the free metric tools as seen from this article. You also want to make sure that you are recording your numbers so that you can compare results from previous measurements. As you begin to build up your database of recorded data, you should be able to identify trends and readjust your social media efforts.
All in all the top takeaway is to create something that should be measured and use those points to monitor, measure, and record. This will give you a solid foundation for your social media efforts.
What are some other tips for measuring your social media efforts. What are your favorite measuring tools and why
