Social Media ROI: Measuring the Effectiveness of your Social Media Campaign

6 months ago by Jessica Miller-Merrell View Comments
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More often than not, when meeting with a new client I am asked questions surrounding Social Media Return on Investment (ROI). Potential clients who are unfamiliar with social media as a form of lead generation, brand awareness, networking, research, or customer service platform are extremely skeptical and quick to ask the ROI question.

While I understand that numbers are used to determine business success, social media is extremely hard to measure, mainly because social media is in its infancy and has become a recognized form of business marketing only within the last year or so.

Much like in business, there are qualitative, or soft, benefits to social media. These include loyalty, trust, passion, interaction, and brand awareness among the clients, colleagues, and customers you interact and engage with.

Business owners understand that you can’t put a price on things like the smile on a customer’s face, and social media is no different. These qualitative factors, in addition to the fact that social media is extremely fragmented, makes it difficult to provide tangible and measurable results.
Measuring quantitative success starts with business leaders having a clear and specific strategy with metrics in mind, and that starts with business leaders having an understanding of social media.

When determining these metrics, I recommend that business professionals consider the following:
• Define your metrics and what success looks like with many stair-stepped goals along the way.
• Ignore metrics like number of followers.
• Focus on relationship building with influencers and buzz marketing.
• Keep detailed records of touches and brand mentions.
• Record web traffic, retweets, and number of mentions or links.

Keep in mind that driving web traffic on social media is only half the challenge in selling a product or service. How you determine your social media success largely depends on your organization’s culture, industry, and ultimate goal within the space. Creating value and differentiating your product or service using online marketing and social media can help.

Photo Credit Fancy Jewels.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is an author, new mother, and human resources professional with a passion for recruiting and all things social media.  She has over 10 years of experience in human resources & recruiting.

Her company, Xceptional HR provides businesses with social media, recruitment, and human resources strategy and consulting.   Jessica’s book, Tweet This! Twitter for Business was released January 2010.  Follow Jessica on Twitter, LinkedIn, & FaceBook.

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  • @mtaylord & @Robert It's true, it's hard to compete with cost of social media. Done right, the only true costs are time and salary (if you are paying someone to do it)

    I always found it funny when people claim the ROI on social media is hard to track. How is it harder to track than traditional advertising or branding? There are track able, tangible measurements that accompany social media that align with company goals: Increased traffic, increased engagement, increased mentions, increased friends, and yes, even increased sales. With analytic and monitoring technology you can easiliy see which efforts are effective and which are not.
  • jessicamillermerrell
    I think that sometimes we have to go beyond the analytics as well. Just like face to face networking we might not always see or understand the benefit we receive right away. Sometimes relationships take several years to lead to a new client or business transaction and social media should be treated no different.

    Thanks for the comments!

    Jessica

    @blogging4jobs
  • I agree with your view on ROI for Social Media. It is all about the quality of the interaction. Can your staff in the social media department produce a high quality communication with your clients/customers?

    There is always a cost, in this case cost of salary since the platform/media channel is free.
    It will come down to getting the right staff for the job and providing them with the right tool AND keep them.

    Great article!
  • mtaylord
    As a Social Media manager for an Information Technology Services company, I feel that the power of social media is underrated. In basic review, ROI on social media is higher than most initiatives. Generally, Social Media doesn't cost anything except the time of the person(s) creating fan pages, or updating feeds. Infinite ROI. Not too many things can come close to that.

    I don't think there really needs to be any sort of complicated ROI calculation. The implementation of social media should remain simple, thorough, and creative; and that's what makes it effective.
  • jessicamillermerrell
    I absolutely agree with you. It is our job to educate and provide definition about ROI and how social media can be used to our business leaders. Once they have an understanding of its benefits and uses, ROI becomes somewhat secondary.

    Thanks for the comment!

    Jessica

    @bloggin4jobs
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