June/Jul 2010

What are the top 5 tips for efficiently measuring social media ROI?

by Jordan Viator, Interactive Communications Manager, Convio

Measuring the return on investment for online campaigns is no new concept.  But in a rapidly changing media landscape, it can be overwhelming for organizations to know how to properly measure the impact of social media efforts and analyze this data for meaningful takeaways.

Luckily, many tracking options and technology integrations with tools such as Convio, Facebook and Gigya exist, allowing for greater insight into the true impact of social efforts. The ability to work within social media platforms can help strengthen your identity and your message. Allowing people to register for your cause through the use of established online identity with Gigya or creating social media widgets using Open platforms like Convio are two great examples of being able to track the effects of a social media strategy. 

Keeping in mind new social media tools and tactical uses are being discovered daily, there are five main tips all organizations should follow when measuring social media activity for ROI:

1. Define success metrics before starting campaigns. How will you know what campaigns are successful if you don’t know what success looks like? In the same way key performance indicators are outlined for website metrics, fundraising goals or advocacy efforts, define successful outcomes from social media and keep these goals top-of-mind while building a social presence and/or campaign.
2. Keep an ongoing dashboard of metrics updated regularly. To properly highlight positive trends and insights pertaining to social media metrics, a regularly updated dashboard containing key metrics over time helps maintain reporting in a scalable fashion. In starting, define what metrics should be measured per social media tactic employed and ensure all meaningful elements are measured. For instance, if you are using Twitter as a key tool in your strategy Twitter followers, references to your organization and number of new followers each week demonstrate awareness growth. Retweets, referrals to website and donations sourced from Twitter illustrate engagement.
3. Be realistic in what you want to track - don’t get lost in the data. Similar to your website, the metrics to potentially measure are endless and multiply each passing day as new tools are introduced. Rather than trying to measure everything start small. Begin with measuring the top 10-15 metrics and grow this number as applicable for the number of tools used and the complexity of your campaigns. This makes measuring less overwhelming and analysis much more realistic.
4. Measure actionable items. All the metrics in the world won’t do any good if you can’t derive actionable meaning from them.  A number of basic metrics like number of Twitter followers or Facebook “likes” are not truly actionable, but analyzing trends for noteworthy incidents helps for future optimization. If you see a spike in followers, reflect on the activity that helped create the boost. If you experience a surge in donations or web traffic, find what messaging was effective and replicate it in the future. If you discover top influencers and advocates, reach out to them for help in future campaigns.
5. Leverage existing online tools to easily track metrics in a scalable manner. With so many metrics, finding each different metric can be a time-consuming task. However, with a little insight into readily-available online tools, managing you social media reporting can be built into your ongoing information gathering. Tools such as Spredfast, Social Mention, Bit.ly and Twitalyzer can respectively help manage your social campaign calendar, send daily reports of activity, track click-throughs of URLs and highlight potential influencers to help spread your cause.  Don’t track each metric individually; use existing tools to help streamline this part of your work.

Regardless of your specific social media strategy, ensuring the right ROI metrics are properly tracked and utilized is a crucial key to success. For more ideas on tracking, as well as a sample reporting dashboard, list of metrics to consider and a complete list of tools to help you get started, see the “Getting Strategic With Social Media” presentation originally presented at Digital Capital Week 2010.

If you want to learn more about how to measure social media ROI, visit Connection Café.