Since its advent, savvy business people have known that there was great value to be tapped by using social media as a way to promote, grow and raise awareness for their businesses. The problem has long been the ability to justify spending on an area that many feel is not able to be accurately measured.
Contrary to that belief, it is possible to calculate the ROI of social media campaigns accurately, and with full details. Jamie Turner, chief content officer of the 60 Second Marketer, writes on Mashable.com,
“If you’re going to calculate the ROI of your social media campaign, you’re going to have to know math. That may come as a disappointment to people who thought social media was only about accumulating Twitter followers or monitoring Facebook ‘Likes,’ but it’s true. The future of social media is about math, metrics and monetization."
Three Categories to Measure
According to Turner there are three categories of social media measurement that you need to be aware of in order to fully understand the value a social media campaign is bringing to the table:
- Quantitative metrics
- Qualitative metrics
- ROI metrics
Each social media stat should be accompanied by a follow-up question: What action can I take? At LoSasso Advertising Inc., we make it a priority to use these metrics to show our clients how their social media campaign is performing. We track the metrics, run reports and monetize the value of a social media campaign in order to accurately show our clients how it can provide a valuable return on investment.
Here are a few of the metrics LoSasso’s social media team analyzes when it comes to measuring social media campaigns.
Quantitative Metrics
- Outbound Tweets
- Followers added or lost per week
- Retweets by followers
- Click-throughs
- Customer service correspondence
- Mentions of brand name
- Reach
- Engagement
- Blog posts per week
Qualitative Metrics
- Reason for Retweets
- Who is Retweeting your message
- Number of lists you’re on
- Loyalty
- Positive/Negative mentions
- Content visualization with StreamGraphs
ROI Metrics
- Conversions
- Direct sales