Social media marketing is a must when it comes to marketing your brand or business on the internet.
And, even though being regularly active and engaged with your followers is a significant part of any successful social media campaign, businesses need to continuously measure and monitor the success of their marketing efforts when using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linked In.
Below, we’re exploring the best ways to track and measure your online social media marketing success.
Vanity Metrics
Vanity metrics include the number of likes your posts get after being published to your feed.
You’ll often hear of people talking negatively about vanity metrics.
While they can be superficial, and, in some instances, they can even give you a false sense of your content's overall reception, vanity metrics are still a meaningful way to judge how well your brand is performing on social media.
That said, it’s essential not to trust vanity metrics entirely when trying to determine the effectiveness of your social media efforts.
For instance, it may be possible that you’re not getting any likes on your posts from your followers, but you are getting hundreds of people clicking through to your website.
While the lack of likes may give you a false sense of failure, diving a bit deeper into your social media analytics would allow you to see that your efforts result in a bunch of website traffic, which may be more indicative of success than likes.
Visibility
Whether you’re marketing on social media or anywhere else, your goal is likely to get your business in front of as many social media users as possible.
Therefore, you’ll want to keep an eye on the number of impressions that your posts are getting, as well as their reach.
Impressions on social media are the total number of times that social media users see your post.
And your reach is the total number of accounts that the post is shown to.
Although these metrics may not tell you whether or not you’re gaining new customers or earning profits, it’s recommended to keep an eye on how far your posts are making it.
For instance, if you see that your posts are gradually getting a better reach, it may mean that a large percentage of your followers are sharing your content.
In turn, you’d be able to deduce that your content planning and creation efforts are being well-received by your target audience.
Don’t forget that logos and branding are also essential aspects of ensuring that your content is as visible, and as memorable as possible. You can create custom logos with Logo Creator, check it out here.
Return On Investment
Lastly, if you’re investing any capital into running ads on social media, you’ll need to keep an eye on your average ROI or Return On Investment.
Essentially, your ROI is the total cost of your marketing or advertising efforts, subtracted from the total cost of the revenue directly generated through those same efforts.
Initially, newer businesses might see relatively lower ROIs on their social media ads.
However, it’s crucial to gradually tweak and change your marketing approach to improve your ROI over time.
If you continue to see a low or negative ROI, it may indicate that you’re not creating the correct type of content to share with your followers.
On the other hand, a higher ROI is always indicative that your paid advertising efforts are being well-received and are generating a solid return on every dollar invested into your campaign.
Measuring Your Social Media Success
In the end, there are dozens of ways you can judge the overall success of your social media marketing efforts.
However, vanity metrics, such as your likes, shares, and comments, your overall visibility, and the overall ROI of any money invested into PPC ads are a few of the most important things to keep an eye on!
This article was written by guest contributor: Stephanie Stayton
