Measuring Your Social Media Efforts

While it's easy for marketing consultants to stress the importance of small businesses getting involved in social media marketing, it can be harder for business owners to measure if doing so is worthwhile. Communicating on Twitter, updating a Facebook page or posting to a company blog all take time and effort, and understanding how well (or even if) those efforts are paying off can be challenging if you don't know what you're looking for.

Like many branding or marketing activities, social media is perhaps better suited for building awareness than for producing sales directly. Because of this, small businesses trying to determine the success of their social media marketing efforts often turn to softer metrics that help gauge how well they are reaching customers and prospects, and whether or not they are engaging in online conversations that can lead to increased sales and revenue.

Understand Your Goals

An important starting point is taking some time to figure out what you hope to gain from getting involved in social media. Increasing revenue is an obvious (and perpetual) goal for small businesses, but instead you may need to first measure an intermediate step. This could be referrals from existing customers or Web site traffic, or a different goal that measures how people enter your company's sales funnel.

Your social media goals could also be determined in part on where your audience tends to hang out online. For instance, your customers and prospects may belong to a demographic that's more likely to use Facebook than Twitter, and knowing that could be an important factor in determining how you direct your social media activities.

Some basic metrics you may wish to study include:

• Follower Growth – This could mean the number of Twitter followers, Facebook fans or friends, blog subscribers, email newsletter subscribers, or another important metric. Increasing the raw number of followers or subscribers may not be indicative of growth by itself, but could yield insights into where your message resonates the loudest.
• Web Traffic – A free Web-traffic analysis tool such as Google Analytics can provide important insights about how people are finding your site and what they're reading once they're there. If Twitter is sending more traffic to your site than Facebook, it might be worthwhile to shift some of your social media time to Twitter.
• Conversations – When you interact with people on Twitter or other sites, what are the conversations like? Are you getting more support inquiries or shooting the breeze about the local weather? Are you highlighting your expertise in some way? Pay attention to what you're talking about, and be prepared to shift the conversation in a way that helps your company.
• How Do People Find You? Asking new customers "how did you hear about us," can also lead to insights about your marketing and branding efforts. If you company's Facebook page is leading to customer inquiries, you'll know the time you spend updating it is a good investment.

Understanding social media and how it fits within your broader branding and business development efforts can be an important step not only in growing your small business, but in doing so with the most effective tools and procedures.