How to measure the ROI of Social Media?

It is no lie: in the world of Social Media Marketing, there are many sellers of smoke. This item provides a novel environment for all kinds of gurus and profiteers eager to play with the knowledge of the people, both the client side and from the provider side. Luckily, we are gradually abandoning the paradigm of “selling smoke”, while the work of the Community Manager is professionalized and find a compromise between those who prefer not serve maxims apply in all cases and those with a free style that often seems almost incomprehensible. Social networks are no longer “new”, and therefore the sale of smoke in this respect is waning. But one of the places where it is still alive in the implementation of the Social Media ROI. In addition, today we will talk a little about that, to try to dispel some all this smoke.

When it comes to ROI are talking about Return on Investment, the “return on investment”, so to speak. This is a performance measure to Happy Diwali 2015 evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of parallel investments. It is one of the ways we have to consider the gains in terms of capital we are investing. To put into words every day: if I invest $ 5, and then won 11 Euros, I”ll have to make an estimate of the net gain on investment, multiplied by a hundred. Therefore, in this case, we 220.

There is another calculation to get the ROI, which is to subtract the cost of investment to gain it, and then divide it again for the cost of the investment. It seems all very simple, but even if we do not consider the element that comes with social media, ROI tends to be a problem if not carefully monitored.

Marketing is one of the elements that strongly influence this equation; it is present on both sides. Not only can influence our net income, but it also has to be seen in the investment we make. In addition, for businesses, today, the ROI is something that has to be applied to their social networking activities. However, unfortunately, this is a more complicated issue.

In short, what we are talking about here is measuring. How can we measure whether a campaign has been successful in Twitter or Facebook? How do we get results when they are constantly updated even days after the season ends? And I think most importantly, how do we know if the sales -or any other purpose, we proposed increase ended up being affected by our actions?

We see many times in videos of success stories that agencies publish on the Internet. “Thanks to my campaign certain product sales have increased by that percentage.” And they have their ways of measuring it. But when we talk strictly social networks, we are facing a different picture.

Why should measure the ROI of social media?

The “why” of something has to be decided internally by each team. Each company may think differently, and has an approach that is not as numerical social network management. In fact, it is so difficult to measure it only by the feeling of a community or the number of page views or impressions, which had a status update; many prefer to be guided by other metrics that are easier to follow. As always, it depends on each one, because each account is a different universe.

Now, what is the benefit that we have to measure ROI? According to various reports, among which includes the prestigious compendium of information published by consultancy Nielsen , during the year 2013 marks already settled in Facebook and Twitter will seek to find a way to replicate the success we have had in virtual in real life. To put it in a basic way, seek to increase sales through social networks. Social networks, of course, require an investment.

The investment may be minimal, such as spending a few hundred dollars a month or even a year, to buy online management tools, monitoring dashboards, gauges of sentiment, and many more applications are invented every day to look hawk eyes exactly what is going on Social Media channels. But an investment can also mean hiring an agency, or a team of people dedicated to managing the channels. And in the world of business, investors want results. That, in Social Media, many times we cannot.

How I can do?

The KPI (key performance indicators) normal more traditional companies do not apply to everyday life in social networks. If we go by these parameters then we will never get satisfactory results.

The best way to come up with these indicators is to get together with our client, and know what the points you need to measure are. Many times this will give us on a plate. At other times, the vast majority-will that fit until we have something automated. The measuring conditions in social networks are changing constantly considering new features, improvements, and other additions that make the platforms and sometimes completely change the game.

We are going to risk sounding repetitive, but the KPI must be measured according to a particular account. This cannot be generalized. We have on one hand a much valued customer the type of interaction we have with users, while on the other hand, another of our clients want to see results as many fans statistical or amount of interaction per day or week. It always depends on the account you are working.

But to get an idea of what we will be facing, these are some of the most popular KPIs that we can find:

• Interactions: interactions can be measured in different ways, depending on how we approach the concept. For example, we can take them as full of comments and Likes in Facebook, the number of mentions and retweets on Twitter, number of Repins on Pinterest, and more. But we can have a more holistic approach somewhat.
• Featured users: we have spoken on previous occasions-called opinion leaders who can help us to have a better brand image, whether or not we hire celebrities for that reason. The presence of this indicator is to measure certain campaigns that are made with these people, for example.
• Engagement : other KPIs that can be measured in different ways is the engagement . Some prefer to do it by adding the number of Likes and comments on a page in a certain period of time, the total number of followers you have. On Twitter, for example, would be under other conditions. It depends on the platform that we are analyzing, but also another indicator that can be used.
• Scope: The scope is an easily measurable metric is achieved through Facebook Insights, of all possible types, and through countless managers, social networks allow us to monitor the performance of our publications.
• Impressions: prints also achieved easily with any report and tool, and allow us to see how many times we appear in the newsfeed or timeline of users, to get an idea of how many people we are reaching with our publication.
• Virility: Although the word “viral” seems a horror of the modern era, some may consider it as a valid measure. How? I have no idea how they do it legally without putting some smoke in the middle, but for example, we can consider the viral Twitter as the way we spread one of our tweets, easily comparable to the extent that we mentioned before.
• Site traffic: if we have specific landing pages or social tools on our website, a site tracker will let us know where they are coming from our visits. Many blogs today get traffic from your social media channels. This information is readily available through Google Analytic, for example.

Just to clarify, it is obvious that none of these metrics is completely accurate. While we are working with some mathematical nature, the reality is that sometimes, just or tools are not working properly, or interaction and page views continue after we make a particular measurement.

There are some tools specifically designed to take control “accurate” the ROI on our social media channels. It is an investment that our customers may be interested in doing, as long as we test and verify before that produce results that make sense.

How accurate are my results?

We said before: these results are not accurate. We may be doing a calculation one day, and the next day one of our users do like a post previously calculated our numbers by sending the devil. Therefore, if we are going to do a crawl, the best way is to periodically, where we absorb these unforeseen changes to reassessments of the numbers previously sent.

On the other hand, what happens when a customer asks if their sales have increased thanks to the existence of a channel on Facebook and Twitter? Today, the presence on these platforms that we believe determines an intention to buy, but we have no way of knowing whether that purchase eventually performed. Nor is that sellers can ask if they decided via Twitter or Facebook. It is just too titanic a survey.

In this case, the best recommendation is to create our own KPIs. Can you tell the extent you have had on Facebook how many units of your product you sold? No, you cannot tell. But I can tell you what kind of presence on the web. Participation in social networks beyond the amount of fans that we are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. Fortunately, it is something that many brands are realizing.

How can we have a return on investment? With loyal followers that, in most cases, consumers end up being. And this is done with a good strategy content and interaction and not by looking how much we will sell next month and how can we measure it on platforms which do not even have that option.