Measuring Social Media ROI: The Basics

Measuring Social Media ROI is a top-of-the mind subject for most business owners. Today I want to talk to you about the basics of measuring your social networking followers.

There are two important things that you have to have in place before we can calculate the strength of your social networking followers. First, you must have some kind of call to action on your website that entices people to become a lead/customer for your product or service. This can be any form (preferably on your website) where people can submit information for you to contact them directly. Or, if you sell a product, purchase your product directly.

Secondly, it is important that you have some kind of tracking system in place that allows you to see how many visitors came to your website, how many of them answered your call to action, and where these people came from. Without this, you have to rely on communication and word of mouth to get a rough idea on how many people found you on social networking websites. I use Google's free Analytics service, which does all of that for me. Once you have those two things in place, you'll be able to do basic calculations on how many active followers you have.

How to measure a follower's value

o Look at the total number of clicks to your website from each social media platform in a month, and divide that by the number of posts you made. This gives you an average visit per post.
o Look at page views per visit, time spent on site and visitor paths to identify what percentage of social media visitors become leads or customers.
o Using these metrics, you can find out how many of your social networking followers actually show interest in your company, or, actually purchased from your company.

Now, this is a very basic way of calculating the monetary ROI (return on investment) of your followers, but also gives you a better idea on how many of your followers are interested in furthering their relationships with you, and your business. While you're doing these calculations, it's also not a bad idea to see how many people commented on or interacted with your social networking page. These people should not be forgotten when calculating the traffic generated on your website, the reason being is that most social networking websites publish a link to your profile on that person's profile when they comment on your business page. This can spark viral marketing, and possibly gain you more customers.

ROI measurements are another subject that goes very deep with social networking, and is too much to cover in this small report. Another important avenue to look into is the importance of customer retention for your company. You need to measure the effect that customer retention has on your company (what will losing a customer cost your company). Since social networking is a perfect way to build and establish relationships (and help people with their problems) you can use these new online measures as a form of customer service. Finally, you want to measure how many people are now actively talking about your community online, or interacting with you online. To get the highest ROI of social media marketing, you will have to measure each of these three avenues, based on your company's numbers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5971655

Top 10 Tips To Increase Your Social Media Traffic (Part 1)

Using social media to generate traffic can be very effective. But a lot of people and businesses start using social media without researching into the best practices prior to their implementation.

By understanding and following the tips in this article, you too should not only be able to increase your traffic, but also increase your fans and online awareness. Building a successful social media community around your business and brand can take time, but persistence can pay off.




The great thing about social media is that a lot of the tips for one particular social network can be easily transferable to another, creating less work and helping you keep the same type of engagement style with your fans.

Right, enough with the introduction. Lets dive into those all important tips.

1. Profile completion

Having a fully completed profile is first and foremost the most important task that should be done. You are essentially filling out a form with all your business details to help attract people. Adding links to your website in the biography section is extremely important as this will be one of the first things a person will see when visiting your profile. An unfinished social media profile can easily put people off, and we all know that first impressions are important.

2. Graphic Design

Many social networks allow you to customise your page with your own branding. With this, you can become very creative and eye catching which can go a long way to securing your business another fan/follower. Try not to add too much information onto your graphic backgrounds as it can be overwhelming and confusing. Here is a prime example of a well executed Twitter background - Coca Cola.

3. Posting Regularly & Engaging

Now that your social media profiles are complete, posting regularly and engaging with your fans will help increase your traffic significantly. A stagnant social media profile can turn people off and you will slowly lose the fans you have already acquired. Scheduling posts can be a great way of keeping your profiles active throughout the day, especially when you are not in the office to post manually. Ezeesocial is a tool that we use to keep track of all our scheduled posts.

4. Using URL Shorteners

Using URL shorteners can help a post look more sleek and inviting, and not just for Twitter (due to its 140 character limit). URL shorteners allow you to track the statistics from specific URLs to see where your traffic is coming from. There are many URL shorteners to use, it mostly boils down to preference. Bit.ly, Tinyurl.com andgoo.gl to name a few, are all useful and get the job done.

5. Photos are king

When it comes to social media, photos are king! Statistically, posts that are accompanied by a photo received 53% more likes than the average post on Facebook. Not only this, photo posts attracted a whopping 103% more comments than the average post. Its time to make a conscious effort to increase the amount of posts that feature high-quality photos. Don't be afraid to have fun with your posts.

To be continued...