Have you ever wondered just how much good your Social Media marketing was doing for your business? You put all this effort into crafting the perfect post or tweet and then pay to turn it into an ad, but you aren’t really sure whether all the time and money are paying off in the long run. This is why a good social media marketing plan should always go hand in hand with a social media marketing measurement plan. You need to know exactly what’s working for your company and what’s not so you don’t have to fool around.

But what should you be measuring? And how do you need to measure it? Let’s take a look at a few easy ways to create a measurement plan.

• Goals—First step is to decide what your goals are for your company when it comes to social media. Are you a new company looking to increase awareness? Are you launching a new product? Do you want to drive traffic to your website? Once you have established your goals then you can decide which stats to review. For example, for increased awareness you might want to look at exposure and reach. For engagement, you would want to measure comments and likes. If you want to drive traffic to your website, take a look at your analytics to find clicks and shares.
• Set a Baseline—Take a look at your current numbers on social media or the reach/exposure from your last campaign. Set that as the baseline that you will compare all future campaigns to. Obviously as you improve your social media strategy improves you can always change this baseline to reflect your development.
• Tools—Most social media networks have ways to track how your posts are doing, however, it might be worth taking a look at a few different tools to get a better understanding for your company. For example, TweetReach (now part of Union Metrics)will help you see how far your tweets reach. SocialMention is a great free tool that measures and analyzes in real time.
• Review—After you have identified your goals, set your baseline and found the tools to help you measure, you need to review your accomplishments after each campaign. If you took a new approach in a marketing campaign, detail what was different about it and how your results changed. For example, if you launch a new product focusing mainly on Twitter conversations, show how your results differed from launching a product where your main social media focus was Facebook.

Social media seems tricky, but it really doesn’t have to be and done the right way, it can be the best part of your marketing strategy. Create a plan and then work your plan to achieve results.

Have some other tips for social media measurement? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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