Measuring Results when Marketing on Social Media

Most businesses are now engaging in some type of marketing on social media. It makes perfect sense: social media has swept the globe, with networks like Facebook and Twitter boasting over 1 billion users each. Even the most specific businesses can find their niche, using outlets like Pinterest and LinkedIn to target specific audiences.

But as social media marketing becomes a standard practice for businesses of all sizes, measuring success is increasing in importance. Rather than simply spending time, money and other resources pushing your message to the general public, it’s important to know what works and what doesn’t, and which of your efforts are actually successful. And to do that, it’s important to measure the right stuff.

Go Beyond Reach

Even when measuring results, most marketers spend their time looking at how many people were reached by their message. That’s a great place to start, but it should never be an end result. You simply never know when users actually read your content and when they simply scroll past it without paying much attention.

Much more important is the action users take after they read your message. Do they click on a link, like comment on or retweet your post, or even like/follow your page? These are the types of things you should measure, slowly turning an audience that may not have never heard of you into customers.

Spend some Money

Speaking of your audience: organic (i.e. nonpaid) posting on social media is pretty basic. Essentially, all or most of the people that like your page will see your content if they’re online at the right time. Unfortunately, that means using only organic social media messaging is an unreliable way of growing your audience and reaching beyond the customers you already know.

Instead, start looking into paid solutions for your social networks of choice. For as little as $5 a day, you can begin to target users based on demographic, interests and even behaviors. As an added bonus, networks reward marketers who spend money to push out their message by giving them a wide variety of metrics – such as cost per click or click-through rate – that help you measure just how successful your marketing on social media truly is.

In short, measuring your success, and adjusting your strategy if you aren’t finding success, is absolutely paramount if you want social media to make an impact in your marketing efforts. Contact us today to learn more about how to use social media to promote your business!