So, what is Social Media ROI anyway?
Social Media ROI can best be explained as the return on your investment from all of the time, money, and effort that you put into marketing your business, products or services using social media.
If you are a non-profit or are just promoting your brand, a social ROI can be simplified in terms of how many views, likes, or shares youve received over a certain period of time.
Do You Know Your Social Media ROI?
If the answer is no, dont feel bad because youre in good company. SproutSocial indicated in an article that In a survey from Convince & Convert, 41% of companies said they had no idea whether or not their social media efforts were actually paying off.
A separate study gives some insight as to why companies arent measuring their social media ROI. This survey looked at some of the specific challenges companies are having when it comes to measuring the value of their social media marketing efforts.
- 56% said an inability to tie social media to business outcomes
- 39% said a lack of analytics, expertise and/or resources
- 38% said poor tools
- 35% said inconsistent analytical approaches
- 30% said unreliable data
So How Do You Get Social Media Done?
Every company has a different approach to how their social media marketing gets done.
Whats your approach to social media marketing?
Do you frantically post anything just to get something on your page?
Are your social media campaigns being posted by your neighbors teenager?
Do you have a program that curates content from other websites or blogs?
Do you implement planned social media marketing campaigns that align with your company’s overall marketing calendar?
Its time to start tracking your efforts. I would say that every business owner should have a social media marketing calendar in place that will help them get the job done, but I also know that most business owners wont take this step.
The reasons range from not enough time to I dont know what to write, post, or talk about.
Take a look at these charts from SmartInsights of what companies are really using social media for:
Figure 1 Source -Smartinsights
Figure 2 Source -Smartinsights
As you can see from the charts, many companies use paid social media for lead generation and brand awareness for organic (free) social media.
How Do I Find Content?
To find content, you can try Google Alerts or Google Trends. Both will give you great ideas about what to talk about as well as updates when there is news about a specific area, company, or any other information you might be interested in.
Industry-related blogs and websites also hold valuable information that you may want to share.
You should also make it a habit to look outside your industry to see what other companies are doing in their social media campaigns. You dont need to copy the campaign, but the concept can be adapted to work in your own business.
How Will I Know If Its Really Working?
The thing is, you cant always tie revenue back to social media. But, It can be done, and to get there youll need to make sure you start tracking your campaigns. Start by choosing a goal. Once you have a goal, you can easily see at the end of the campaign whether those goals were met.
You can track your efforts using several available tools. Try using Google Analytics goals and event tracking to track sales, signups, and downloads from websites. There are many more software tools and programs (paid and free) available that you can use to get analytics on how youre doing in your social media campaigns.
Planning and tracking will help you determine if you need to step up your game or pass it on to someone with more experience who can get better results.
For more information about generating an ROI from your social media marketing read the article Does Social Media marketing actually generate ROI? from smartinsights.
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