How Do You Know if Your Social Networking Works?

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Looking to measure the results of your social networks, but don’t know where to start? In this post, as an Internet marketing company, we cover the basics of establishing goals and tracking your results through social media.

You want to track both qualitative and quantitative results. Let’s take a look at each, starting with the quantitative side. As we’ve mentioned in various posts, you want to establish goals and analyze your social networks as funnels. On the front end, you want to review the network size, number of followers, number of fans, and quantity of members. Establishing goals and analyzing the growth of your social networks is such a key metric because it provides a clear indication of growth. It provides clarity on the effectiveness of your collective efforts.

The next metric that you want to establish and measure is the quantity of commentary about your brand, products, etc. This gives you a clear understanding of the quality and value of the conversations that you are having with your audience. If comment volume is high, it’s a strong indication that you are connecting with your audience and stimulating a response.

The next number that you want to establish and measure is the number of visitors that you are driving from your social networks to your Website. This is important because it indicates if your social media efforts are driving people to take the next step and convert into a customer. For greater clarity, track the volume of leads, presentations, and sales made from these visitors to determine if the visitors are profitable.

On the qualitative side, you want to track the quality of the comments about your brand, products, and key personnel. The reason why this is important is because you want to ensure that the higher volume of comments that you are receiving are, indeed, positive. The sentiment of comments made gives you a clear indication of how positive your impact is on your market. And there are several tools that you can use to track comments and sentiment, including Brandwatch, Alterian, Radian6, MutualMind, and Synthsio.

If you have any questions regarding how to establish the goals of your social networks and the tools to track results, please comment.