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Social Media Marketing is Worth the Effort
There's a common misconception that social media marketing cannot be measured. On the contrary, there are lots of different ways to measure a social media marketing campaign. Once you have an achievable goal, or objective, in mind for your campaign (the example given in class was "To be considered the go-to brand on social media for information and conversation about widgets"), you should then identify the key results that will get you to your objective. Are many people going to your social media pages? Are they talking about widgets on your page? Is there enough unique information about widgets on your pages?
Once you know what to look for, you need a plan. Decide which social media platforms will help you achieve your goal. Use calls-to-action on your social media pages to engage consumers and lead you toward your goal. You should also be flexible with your goal, as it may change at any time throughout the process.
When it comes to measuring, there are two types of measurements you're going to need for social media: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative measurements are the numbers you'll get when you measure the effectiveness of your campaign. They include the reach, frequency, and sharing of your messages on social media, and the click-throughs, sales conversions, and view-throughs on your website. There are many analytics tools that can provide you with this information, including Google Analytics and Facebook Insights. Here is a list of the top 25 social media analytics tools.
Qualitative measurements are the intangible outcomes of your campaign that involve customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. These are the opinions people have about your company that can be measured by looking at how engaged people are on your social media pages and what they're saying, whether you have any consumer advocates for your brand and how influential they are, how long it takes for your company to respond to feedback and how good it is at handling complaints,, and whether consumers are giving you good ideas for improvements on your product or service and are being heard.
Both types of measurements are equally important. Also, when you're looking at the trends within your results, it's a good idea to step back and analyze them over a long period of time, maybe yearly. This is because trends are always changing on social media. Your brand might not be talked about for a while, and then might skyrocket in popularity for a short amount of time. Seasonality also affects this. For instance, if you sell winter sports gear, it wouldn't make sense for you to compare your measurement results in December to the ones you get in June. There's going to be a huge difference.
Measuring in marketing is very important because you want to see results and make sure your efforts are paying off. But it's also important to remember that marketing should be fun. Yesterday, I designed business cards on Microsoft Publisher to promote my blog, printed them out on card stock paper, and cut them out on a paper cutter. Despite the work, it was a lot of fun being creative, and it was exciting knowing that these cards might bring someone to my blog. Especially in social media marketing, you want to show customers that you enjoy what you're doing to reach out to them, and that you're company is personable and approachable. Enjoy your interactions with them so it's not just a job, but a conversation you care about.
