Developing an Effective Social Media Measurement Strategy

There is no shortage of advice on how to engage people on social media. But how do you know if you are making an impact? Are your tweets and Facebook posts influencing potential customers, or are they landing with a thud? Clients want to see results, so you better have an answer for them when they inquire.

Developing a method to measure and track social media engagement is key to understanding how social is performing compared to other media. At PR News’ Digital PR Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, Maria Saltz, senior manager for social media analytics at Adobe, shared important points to remember when tracking visitor engagement with content to prove the value of your social media strategy.

• Define business objectives and goals. This includes getting input from a number of groups, including the executive team, marketing, sales, production and customer support. Ask questions and set expectations.
• Determine KPIs that show business impact. Key performance indicators are quantifiable and actionable. They measure factors that are critical to the organization’s success and are tied to business goals and targets.
• Measure the value of your campaign. Use campaign codes in the URLs for each post. Employ social analytics tools to follow traffic from social content.
• Track the long-term impact of engagement. Break down site visitors that have been referred by social sites or specific campaigns to understand the impact of visitor engagement with social content.

Don’t leave your social media strategy to chance and hope that it all works out. When armed with meaningful data, you will have the power to adjust your strategy to improve success and avoid failure.

Follow Maria Saltz: @MariaSaltz

Follow Richard Brownell: @RickBrownell