How to Measure Social Media Campaigns

If you use social media for your business, you should be measuring it so that you can learn what's successful, what isn't and how you can improve. From Entrepreneur.com and KISSmetrics, here's are five easy steps to tracking a social media campaign.

Determine Goals
First decide what you are trying to accomplish or gain with social media. Then decide which channels are most relevant to those goals. Social media can be used for many things: broadcasting information, answering customer questions, engaging with a community. Also figure out if you want your audience to do with your content: read, share, reply, click, purchase or engage.

Create Metrics
Match your goals to actual metrics and behaviors you can measure.

• To measure awareness, look at volume, reach, exposure and amplification.
• To measure engagement, look at retweets, comments, replies and participants.
• To measure traffic, look at URL shares, clicks and conversions.
• To measure an increase of your brand's share of voice, look at volume relative to your closest competitors.

Measure
Find tools to capture the metrics associated with your goals. Often, social media channels themselves provide some form of analytics. Otherwise, consider researching third party tools or build your own.

Monitor and Report
Use initial findings to set a baseline for future measurement. Compare your numbers to your expectations, and to your competitors'. Set up a schedule for regular reporting. Reports should contain enough context for other stakeholders to understand.

Adjust, Repeat
Review your program for missing elements, and remove anything superfluous. Make changes and improvements, then measure again. Continue to tweak until you are fully addressing your goals.

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