Social media may be, perhaps, your most effective weapon in all of your marketing arsenal. Your return on investment (ROI) is something that most small companies don’t seem to bother with especially as it relates to their social media marketing. When trying to get a handle on your social media ROI, it is best to look at many factors especially those factors that aren’t just pure vanity metrics such as “likes”.
- The first thing you need to put together is a plan. What exactly do you want your social media efforts to do? Are you looking to just establish brand awareness? Are you looking to drive traffic to your site, your office or your retail store? Once you have formulated a plan, you need to establish specific and measurable goals that will put those plans into action. You can’t possibly measure your social media ROI without specific goals in mind.
- Establish your tactics and content according to the defined goals. Just don’t throw up a post for the sake of posting. Also, there is no need to post everyday. Have a schedule in mind and stick to it. When your posts do appear, they will have that much more impact because the people following your brand know you are serious and won’t waste their valuable time. Look to establish a reputation for quality content over simple minded quantity. Anyone can throw up a cat video but few can offer their audience an actual worthwhile reason for being there.
- Never focus on what are known as the “vanity” metrics. How many followers you have or how many “likes” some post got are useless to you with regard to measuring the effectiveness of your plan. You want engagement. You want traffic. You want conversions. Your social media marketing only exists to engage potential customers and clients and to drive traffic to your site or location so that you can make the sale.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
