Do you enjoy social networking? Do you find it difficult to persuade your employer of the value of social media? You’ve come to the right place! There are several advantages to using social media as part of your marketing mix and having a clear objective for your company’s social media marketing is critical.
One of the most difficult problems with social media in an organisation is demonstrating a return on investment (ROI) as it may be utilised for a variety of non-monetary objectives. You may cross the millions of active users across social media platforms every day, but how can you translate your social media efforts into monetary outcomes?
Let’s have a look at 5 stages that will assist you in establishing your success.
1. ESTABLISH YOUR KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (KPIS).
KPIs are measures you can use to determine how well you’re doing in achieving your company objectives over time. Because you can’t observe social media’s success by looking at revenue alone, it differs from other marketing campaigns. To figure out which KPIs to measure, think about what results you want and whether you have access to data reflecting those outcomes.
Choose KPI goals that are important for your company. Engagement and favourable internet feedback are examples of valuable outcomes. Some of the most important KPIs are:
- Reach—the total number of unique accounts that viewed your social media post (or any other segment)
- Impressions—number of times a post appears in a user’s feed
- Engagement—likes, comments, shares, link clicks, etc.
- Most popular content—content with the most engagements
- Social media referral traffic—traffic to your website that originates from a social media site
- Optimal times for engagement—the days/times when you get the most reach and engagement for your posts
2. Make sure your social media goals are aligned with business objectives.
Your KPIs and social media objectives must be in harmony with your company’s broader goals in order to demonstrate value. Many companies focus on social media as an entity, but this is a mistake. Examine your company’s corporate goals to see which of them it may help you accomplish through social media. For example,
- Increase brand awareness—focus on engagement, reach, and followers
- Increase traffic to the website – focus on social media referral traffic to the website, clicks on links, and bounce rate of social media site traffic (how qualified)
- New leads—downloads, personal information, and participation
- Customer service—support questions and response time
- Social listening—customer conversations, product improvement, and suggestions/feedback
Make sure the objectives you establish are clear, measurable, possible, relevant, and timely (SMART). Set expectations for improvement based on your prior performance. You’ll be able to demonstrate how amazing social media marketing is to your superior!
3. Choose your platforms and put an action plan in place.
Determine which social media platform will be best suited to help you connect with your ideal clients/buyers and express yourself.
- Facebook—for building a community
- Instagram—for connecting with existing customers
- LinkedIn—for becoming a thought leader
- Twitter— for connecting with influencers
- YouTube—for attracting new customers
- Pinterest—for driving traffic and leads
Create a list of activities you’ll perform to reach your objectives (be sure to include the frequency with which each activity will be done) and finish your action plan.
This is essential: Make sure to complete your tasks on a DAILY basis, and keep track of how long each activity takes you. As your activities become more routine, you’ll be able to accomplish them faster. You’ll be able to apply this data to adjust your strategy and connect time spent and resources utilised back to the ROI
4. Start tracking.
The best part is yet to come. Start tracking the strategy you’ve developed and measuring the results. Then show your employer how great social media marketing is for the firm!
There are a few social media sites where you can keep track of your metrics right within the platform. There are also additional tools and methods to monitor more information available on other platforms. Set Google Analytics goals
- Facebook Pixel
- UTM parameters
- Trackable URLs (Google campaign URL builder)
- Create campaign-specific landing pages
Using third-party tools such as HubSpot, Databox, and Google Analytics can also assist you to evaluate your social media ROI. Some of these platforms even automate the tracking for you and give customised reports. And we all love automating tasks, right?
Okay, last one…
5. Assign a monetary value to each KPI and calculate your investment.
Now that you’ve created your KPIs, objectives, action plan, and tracking, it’s time to put a dollar value on each KPI. Given the importance of each KPI to your organisation, how much is it worth? What would you pay for every new lead, follower, click or another type of interaction?
Depending on your company’s goals, you may value certain KPIs differently. You may place a higher worth on engagement and impressions than downloads if your aim is to raise brand recognition. Use this calculator to figure out how much money each social media post is worth.
When you’re looking at your company’s investment into social media, look at your time, tools, and spend:
- How much time do you consume performing social media tasks and analysing data?
- How much money do you have to maintain in the tools used to help you analyse your data?
- How much is your actual social media advertising disburse?
You may evaluate the return on investment of your social media goals after you’ve determined their value and the time and resources your firm has invested.
Social Media ROI = [(SM return – SM investment) / SM investment] x 100
Many organisations are concerned about their social media marketing’s success. It doesn’t have to be the elephant in the room. Choose the correct KPIs to track, connect your SMART objectives with company goals, and create an action plan that you can measure with appropriate tools.
You’re not going to get it perfect the first time. You’re going to mess up a lot of times before you figure out what works for you! test, test, test! You won’t be able to put your ideal strategy into action right away.
Analyse the data and optimise your plan over and over again until you’ve found what works best for you. You’ll be able to spend your money in places that give you the best outcomes eventually. As with other types of marketing, social media is always evolving, so keep an eye on it to ensure that it stays current.
ROI of your social media efforts can be beneficial to your business, and it may provide you with data to apply in other aspects of your marketing. Keep in mind that there is always more to test and learn. Now that you’ve had a chance to sit down, get up and go ahead and post!
