ROI Archives | Social Speak Network

How to Measure Social Media ROI

We all know what ROI stands for. Unfortunately, not everyone understands its meaning and importance.

If your company is spending money on social media marketing, you want to measure your ROI. This is important so you have an idea what exactly it is you’re getting out of the time, effort and resources you commit to your campaign. It helps you measure the efficiency of your social media marketing efforts.

To show you how you can track your social media ROI, here are the steps you should take to help you gauge the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign.

Identify your goal

Different organizations will have different goals. Before you can track and measure your ROI, you first need to identify your goals. Is it to generate more product trials, get signups for your newsletter or increase traffic to your site?

Track your goal

Each of your goals can be measured using specific metrics such as traffic, engagement, reach, lead generation etc. It all depends on your goal.

There are certain tools that can be used to measure the effectiveness of your actions. You can track follows, likes and share in Buffer. Website actions such as signups, downloads and sales can be tracked in Google Analytics.

Quantify social media return

Add up all the expenses, including the cost of boosting a Facebook post, running a promoted ad and everything that go into generating content and maintaining social media presence.

Determining how much you have spent will help you determine whether you’re getting a positive or negative return on your social media marketing efforts. Now, calculate your ROI using this formula: (Earnings – Costs) x 100 / Costs

Adjust tactics

Monitor the impact of your social media efforts using the formula given above and then adjust your tactics as needed to improve your social media ROI.

November 10, 2015/by Caitlin McDonald

Boundless Internet Marketing Solutions, Internet Marketing, LinkedIn, Social Media

Using LinkedIn As A Marketing Tool

After learning the tricks to social media marketing tricks, it is time to put these concepts to work. If you are in need of business to business networking, then LinkedIn is the best place to start.

Of all the social networking platforms, LinkedIn is considered to be the most professional. Used by more than 135 million business professionals worldwide, this should be a part of your social media marketing strategy.

If you are like most people, you might be using LinkedIn as an online resume. Take advantage of this platform and use it as a marketing tool. Read on and incorporate these recommendations into your marketing campaign.

Status updates

This is one of the best ways in keeping your connections informed about what is happening to your business. Post status updates on a regular basis in order to appear active to the LinkedIn community. You can also use links and drive them to your site. Sharing contents that is related to your business may also be a good idea.

Blog posts

Every time you post a blog on your website, important details like the title, abstract and the link to your post will automatically be posted to your LinkedIn profile.

Events

If you are organizing an event or are speaking at an event, you are free to create a LinkedIn event in order to help you promote this event and generate interest.

Presentations

If you have posted a Powerpoint presentation in Google docs or SlideShare, you can also attach this presentation in your LinkedIn profile.

Twitter

If you are an active tweeter, you can always integrate your status updates with your tweets in order to keep your followers and connections informed.

Creative portfolio

Users with a creative portfolio are given the chance to post it to the Behance Network. Once you’re done, you can showcase your work in your LinkedIn profile.

Recommendations

You can easily request recommendations from your LinkedIn connections. A collection of recommendations that highlight your experience and expertise would significantly enhance your profile.

March 31, 2014/by Caitlin McDonald

Internet Marketing, Social Media

Things to Consider When Measuring your Social Media ROI

If you think tracking the return on investment of your company’s social media is not necessary, then you might want to re-think your priorities. When tweaked and tracked properly, it could provide a powerful web presence to any start-up company and could help you keep up with large companies. Plus, it helps business owners to determine if their marketing strategies are working or not.

Web analytics

Web analytics is one of the most efficient ways of gauging your social media marketing ROI. Most business owners use Google Analytics to do this. By using this tool, you can easily determine the number of people who clicked on the link you shared on any social media channel. Most importantly, you’ll have a more accurate count on the number of people who visited your site through the link.

Engaging contents

Before focusing on the metrics, you’ll have to post meaningful and interesting contents through all your social channels on a regular basis. Also, take note of the kind of contents that your followers share, like and comment on the most.

Create posts that will capture the attention of your followers. This way, they’ll be interested to share your posts and could lead to a more solid fan base. Though there are no guarantees of turning these followers into paying customers, having numerous followers might actually help.

Frequency

While we fully understand the importance of keeping track of your social media ROI, knowing how often you should check on the metrics is also helpful. Experts suggest you keep track of your metrics at least once a week. This way, you’ll be able to understand the types of content which drives the most number of web visits. Most importantly, you can focus on determining which content turns into sales.

Mistakes

Obsessing over the number of likes and followers your company gets is one of the biggest mistakes most business owners commit.

Please bear in mind that these information could be used in improving your social media marketing campaign. So, dig deeper and focus on the metrics that could help you climb the ladder of success.

December 10, 2013/by Caitlin McDonald

Social Media

5 Facts about the Future of Social Media

There’s no doubt that it’s going to be a big year for social media, and there are no signs of social media to die down any time soon. As social media continues to grow, keep these five things in mind to help your own social media strategy.

1. SEO rankings will be more affected by social influence

Google is clearly the top-notch search engine that rewards good influence by single digit rankings. Marketers have watched Google over the years to examine how it determines what is influential, and worthy of being shown in search results. Now, the same thing is happening with social media influence. Social media content already has a huge impact on search engine results pages. Now the question becomes which content is going to have the most influence. Marketers need to monitor the influence of this content to stay successful.

2. Revenue related metrics will be measured more

At social media’s beginning, the emphasis was on the number of “likes,” fans and followers. Marketers now realize these fans and followers are real people who have given their time and support to certain brands. Brand awareness is certainly important, but solid ROI numbers should be attached to this awareness. In the year to come, stronger metrics platforms will be used that will come with real revenue numbers with each social media brand. These improved metrics will give marketers stronger data, which will in turn lead to better content and stronger campaigns.

3. More attention and spending will go towards social media

This seems like an obvious fact given the growing importance of social media. Companies are seeing the value of social media and are realizing that there’s so much more to social media than witty Tweets and Facebook “likes.” Social media is now more than brand “fluff” and has become a major part of marketing campaigns. Social media is now being taken more seriously and it is sure become a standardize practice across businesses everywhere.

4. Social sharing will become standard on all websites

Online publishing became one of the first industries to capitalize on social sharing, as sites started putting sharing options to their content leading to more page views and higher SERP rankings. This year, more companies will see that viewers are unlikely to share something unless they see the option to share it. With this in mind, adding sharing options to pages will ultimately lead to greater brand awareness.

5. Social and search will become one in the same

The line between social and search are blending more and more together. It will be interesting to watch Google+ as a leader in this arena. Marketers should watch and see if Google+ really challenges Facebook. Google+ will most likely integrate with other platforms and find its balance, but is likely to gain more importance if Google buys into a social media management system.

These social media trends are sure to be seen through this year. But in this fast moving industry, be ready for surprises around all corners of the Internet marketing world!

February 7, 2012/0 Comments/by Caitlin McDonald

Social Media

Optimize Social Media ROI-Return on Influence!

Return on investment with social media can polarize several public relations, marketing and advertising efforts since there are a growing number of agencies and businesses utilizing social media marketing and analysis efforts to see return on investment. While some companies get ROI through social media use on Facebook or YouTube, marketers need to realize that in order to optimize their social media efforts, true ROI is about influence from consumers!

ROI needs to involve connections companies make with their customers. Companies’ social media marketing should act as recommendations and inspirations to buy certain products and services. The goal is not to get an instant purchase from consumers, but to get the customer interested as they search a companies’ social/mobile web, and potentially gain a customer for life.

Relationships with customers are directly linked to the value companies get in return from investment in social media. With Twitter, it should not be a brand’s objective to sell the most products by tweeting. Instead, Twitter should be used to inform customers and show them all about their brands’ experience so they understand what the brand is all about, not just what they’re selling.

The stronger the connection brands have with their customers, the more likely those customers will be inclined to buy into the brand for life. Some ROI models for social media are focused on a direct marketing approach, also known as an offer and response approach. The problem with that is that companies end up chasing a platform where their target market might be, instead of understanding how to influence that target market with a social experience. Companies need to stop focuses on seeing ROI from social media coming strictly through direct sales!

Strong, productive social media marketing will influence business outcomes, just as a good public relations campaign will. Positive media coverage leads to awareness and inspires interest and discovery of the brand. Social experiences can provide brand-advertising benefits and push consumers to purchase sooner, and/or more often.

When it comes to social media marketing, most markers are just chasing popular platforms with their own ideas of what they think will motivate their customers to buy. But, what they should be doing instead is interpreting customer preferences and optimize their efforts to address the kinds of social experiences that will bring about a purchase and gain loyal customers. Social media is a platform to help businesses serve customer needs throughout a lifecycle, not just during a time of peak sales. With this in mind, new opportunities in social media marketing are available for those businesses willing to be influenced by their consumers!

December 19, 2011/11 Comments/by Caitlin McDonald