You are spending time and money on your Social Media but how do you measure if you are getting good value from it? Some companies work on numbers and set targets for their campaigns based on increases in Facebook ‘likes’ or Twitter followers, but is this a good idea?
Assuming your business sells cars, you should reasonably expect that as a result of your Social Media campaign you will sell more cars. So, at the end of six months the person responsible for your Social Media campaign happily tells you you have 1,000 more ‘likes’ and 750 more Twitter followers but have you sold more cars? If you have sold more cars can you tell it is due to the Social Media campaign? If you can’t link your sales to the campaign I suggest you set the wrong targets in the first place or set the correct targets but didn’t have the processes in place to link the sales to the Social media exposure – assuming this is even practicable. The moral of today’s tale … Don’t waste your time and money on Social Media if you can’t measure it’s effectiveness!
Measuring the effect of social media
As mentioned, I have recorded the numbers of connections and followers from LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to provide a benchmark for future figures. I shall also monitor traffic to the web site in general and blog pages in particular to see how traffic changes over time, and as a result of particular activity. Measuring the effect social media has on the course of my life is likely to be more difficult but hopefully it will be possible to record direct and indirect impacts on my activity. If you have any thoughts on this please let me have them!