Let’s Get Social: How to Measure the Success of a Social Campaign
photo by stevenharris’
On today’s Internet, with so many people using so many different sites, social media campaigns are truly a dime a dozen. They’re incredibly widespread and most are very simplistic, bullish, and quite close to measuring as spam. This is because people insist on pushing their message out there as quickly and as hard as they can. By and large, this leads to less trust over the entire expanse of social media.
Facebook would be the exception. Due to the site’s many updates geared toward advertisers specifically, Facebook is able to help an individual deliver a social campaign in an attractive, nonintrusive, friendly way that plays to the social context of the site.
However, since social media marketing tactics can so easily go belly-up on most social sites, how exactly do you measure the success of a marketing campaign on Facebook? Below, you will read about the four “C’s” of measuring campaign success.
Gauge Your Social Campaign’s Effectiveness in Just 4 Simple Steps
- Clearly Defining Goals
The real trick to measuring the success of a social campaign is to first set up a system of goals that are easy for you to define. If you know where you want to go, you’ll easily be able to spot progress toward that goal. If you want to sell more products, earn more conversions or referrals, generate more leads, gain more traffic, drive up CTR, etc, make a note of each of these goals and have them clearly and objectively established before moving on to the second step. - Creating Your Baseline
Next up, take the goals you have and create your baselines. You could be using the best Facebook ads and greatest marketing methods out there, but unless you know where you started from, it’s impossible to tell how much progress you’ve made. Check out your current stats on Facebook, your current number of contacts, your current traffic numbers, and other aspects of your business in general. These are your baselines – your starting point from which you will begin to measure any possible marketing success. - Constant Tracking
Now that you have your goals defined and your baselines created, it’s time to start tracking your different marketing methods. This is easy to do on Facebook, either using the site’s analytics or using a third-party app to check out your campaign’s progress. Any way you go here, you should be tracking every different marketing technique you’re using to see what’s working, how it’s working, and how you can improve upon it. Instead of waiting a while to change things around, you need to run a hands-on campaign and measure things as they’re happening. - Conversion of Customers
Finally you get to the point where you can measure your conversions. Now that you know how to track your different marketing methods and can clearly separate any progress from your baseline, you can pinpoint which conversions (or even mere contacts) were generated via your social media campaign. What you’re looking for here is strictly success; you’re hoping to see an increase in conversions. If you don’t, you’ll have to inevitably go back to square one.
Remember that measuring the success of your social campaign is basically just realizing where you came from and what you want out of your campaign. This is different for everyone, so define your personal goals before expecting big results.
- Guest Post By Eric Taylor
