The Definitive Guide to Measure Your Social Media Marketing

Having a strong online presence is critical in today’s digital world, and businesses know that – That’s why everyone is on social media nowadays. However, keeping track of your social media program’s ROI and financial implications (Aka Social Media Analytics), including the impact on revenue, sales, customer lifetime value, cost per lead…etc, is still a challenge for many businesses.

Social Media has unique KPIs compared to other channels. Different businesses have different needs, however, here are the most common KPIs you should be tracking in order to not only calculate ROI for your social media efforts but also use the information to optimize and improve your social media strategy. We also have a definitive guide on Social Media Strategy if you want to ensure you are on the right track.

Engagement Rates: these could be views, clicks, comments, duration of engagement, etc. The engagement rates can be calculated by campaigns, content item, day of week, time of day in order to get a better understanding of the responses from your audience.

Share Rates: These are things like shares, likes, tweets, retweets, pins, links, mentions, etc. This can also be calculated as amplification rates by platforms, content item, fan/followers, day of week, time of day, etc.

Reach: This is defined as impressions by campaigns, content items, platform..etc

Volume and Sentiment of Online Conversations: how much people talk about / mention your product and brand.

Traffic Generated by source, content type, item, and campaign, etc

Conversion Rates: this includes new followers, likes, form completions, newsletter signups, sales and qualified leads by campaign, platform, time of day, day of week, etc.

Follower Count: number of followers via each social media channel. Make sure your followers are your target audience or people who are relevant to your industry.

Track these metrics over time to gauge progress and help demonstrate ROI.

Top Free Social Media Analytics Tools to Track Your Social Media Performance:

1) Google Analytics

Tracks website referrals from your social media channels.

2) Hootsuite, or Bufferapp

Tracks clicks on social media content and posts. They are also two of the top social media management tools. I personally prefer bufferapp because of its ease of use and intuitive social scheduling.

3) Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics, Google+ Insights, Youtube Analytics

Each social media platform comes with its own analytics dashboard where it provides insights into your social media performance. Most of these data can be exported to a spreadsheet for to analyze and derive insights to improve your social media efforts.

4) Twitalyzer, TwitterCounter, BrandTweetStatistics, TweetReach

All of these tools can help you analyze your twitter presence and your post performance.

5) Tweriod, Timely and TweetWhen

These can help you determine the best time to post

6) PinReach and Pinpuff

These two tools can help analyzing your Pinterest presence and performance

7) ViralHeat, Topsy

These tools helps analyzing online sentiment and numbers of mentions, brand performance on various networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

There are many free tools out there that can help you easily measure your social media campaigns. Are you using of the tools listed above? Please comment below other social media measurement tools that you know of.  I am curious to know what other tools you are currently using.