In every major survey of social marketers, “Social ROI” is still cited as a top challenge. Many public relations and marketing specialist struggle to find the best way to measure their company’s success on social media because there is no real solution. However, according to Simply Measured, they may be getting close to finding one. Simply Measured’s “The Social Marketer’s Guide to Social Media ROI” provides imperative knowledge on how to develop a social attribution plan so you can better understand and measure social media ROI for your company.
What is social media ROI? This is a complicated answer because ROI isn’t the same for every company and it may not even mean revenue for your business. It’s important to note that there won’t ever be a universal answer because every brand is different and not every social platform can be tracked.
Social ROI is more than assigning dollars to social media, you also have to answer next-order questions like how do we connect social engagement to site traffic, conversion, customer lifetime value and loyalty? How do we leverage social signals to drive marketing actions through our entire marketing process? How do we identify the people who truly impact our business via social media?
In order to understand social media ROI, you first have to take into consideration attribution. Attribution is vital because it helps you identify what socially impacts your customers to want to share or purchase your product/services. Therefore, attribution and social media ROI go hand-in-hand because you can’t convert a click into a purchase until you know what made your customer click on that particular link. Here are three steps that will guide you in developing the right social attribution plan:
- Identification: Identify direct traffic and dark sharing of your web content. Using a tracking code will help you be able to see how content is being shared on the internet, even across dark social.
- What is dark social? When a link is shared via online chat or email instead of through a social media platform. The link then becomes untraceable, and can’t be measured.
- Communication and Integration: Many people are not aligning social media with their other digital marketing functions because they’re not taking social media seriously. The only way to attribute traffic correctly is by partnering with your web optimization team to identify where your “direct” traffic and darks social is coming from.
- Alignment: Be sure to attribute social’s full impact on your company, then align it with the rest of the marketing plan in order to focus on areas that have the greatest impact.
Following these three-steps and fully understanding what social media ROI means for your brand will help you learn your customers and how to convert them. To read Simply Measured’s full social media ROI guide, visit their website: http://ow.ly/Z8K6L
Symeria Palmer is an Account Coordinator at Trevelino/Keller. She is passionate about traveling the world and enjoying life’s treasures.
