When I hear people talk about measuring social media marketing success in myopic terms like growing followers, or getting direct sales, I feel like a marketing intervention needs to be staged. Social media absolutely supports sales, but it’s a piece of the overall marketing puzzle. You can’t expect one social media post will make you money honey! For any of you wondering how to measure social media marketing success, here is what you need to know.
#1 – Start By Understanding the Five Factors for Social Media Marketing Success.
There are five factors for social marketing success: credibility, usability, visibility, salability, and scalability. Sales do not happen unless all factors are attended to. Knowing and managing these five factors will help get you know what to focus on, what needs to be optimized and where your strengths and weakness lie.
Credibility is believability. Social media marketing helps people know, like, and trust you. Are you sharing content that really matters? Are your cover photos designed to be on brand? Are you consistently posting content that benefits your target audience?
Usability is how easy your social media assets are to use. This can include the ease of being able to easily navigate or search your blog, having the right share widgets installed on your blog and optimized properly, or having the right Facebook template installed so your page is well organized.
Visibility is how well you are found on social media. You can be the most qualified expert or company, but if nobody knows about you, then you have a problem. Visibility can come from boosting Facebook posts, increasing your social media posts by using great tools like Hootsuite.com and being more mindful of using hashtags when you post. Blogging and social media content can also help boost your search engine visibility, so determine the right phrases to include in your posts.
Sellability is how well you help people understand your value. Every social media profile description needs to clearly communicate who you are, what you do and whom you serve. This includes your LinkedIn summary, Twitter description, Instagram description, Facebook about area and more.
Scalability is how solid your social media foundation is. When you create great content and you commit to creating content for social media regularly, this content is an investment! It builds and compounds over time like a great stock investment. I love how I am able to reference old blog posts by simply searching the blog toolbox. I have content to share for my company and my clients companies for a lifetime thanks to the continual development of quality content!
#2 – Measure Social Media Success Against Your Social Media Strategy
We do not plan to fail, we fail to plan. What is your social media marketing strategy? Don’t have one? If you need help, know that your social media marketing needs to be bigger than you or your organization. Have an overarching theme – think broadly about the topics you will address. Learn more about this by reading my post on keeping social media strong. Part of your planning needs to include deciding who is responsible for managing your brand’s social media efforts. Neglected social media creates a poor impression of a business, just like an abandoned storefront. Ensure your social media cover photos are consistent with your brand, when you write posts, use phrases in your text or hashtags that you want to be searched and found on, and plan for outreach. Many brands build into their social media marketing plan a budget for Facebook ads, Instagram ads and sometimes initially search ads to drive traffic to a site or blog.
#3 – If You Don’t Think Your Social Media Marketing is Paying Off, Revisit Your Approach
It’s not uncommon to feel like your social media isn’t “successful”. When I was interviewed by Intuit’s Small Business blog for an article called, Why Social Media Isn’t Paying Off for Your Business, I outlined tips businesses can do to make their investment work. If you don’t feel like things are not working out for you with social media, follow these tips for social media marketing success:
- Plan your social media marketing journey
- Be conversational – this is social media after all!
- Teach and educate, I call this markeding (marketing and education)
- Make social connections
- Have fun!
Social media marketing is a journey, NOT a destination. Success is about building trust, serving customers, supporting sales, increasing engagement, building your brand, boosting awareness and communicating news.
If you feel like you need social media support, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Virtual marketing hugs,
