How To Measure Your Organization’s Social Media Success

Your organization or business knows that it’s important to measure the progress you’re making with your social media program or campaign, but what do you measure, why and how?

There’s no single, simple answer, but today we’ll offer a framework to guide you through the thicket of differing approaches you should consider before implementing a metrics program. (If you have other approaches that have worked for you, please add them to the comments!)

Creating goals to advance your mission

First off, don’t obsess about metrics. In fact, forget about the data altogether. What you’re really trying to do is advance your organization’s mission. Metrics are just a tool to help you do that.

Before assigning someone on your staff to take ownership of metrics, ask yourself: What are the key items we need to track to determine if we’re moving the needle? Have I clearly formulated a set of goals to advance my organization’s strategic or business objectives? Once you have a set of goals in place, then, and only then, should you begin considering which tools to use for your measurements.

Start by listing a series of specific, concrete, short-term, measurable, achievable goals that advance your long-term mission. Most of these goals should be short-term and modest in scope. Your organization may want to:

• Grow traffic to your website or blog
• Grow your newsletter list
• Motivate people to donate
• Move people to take a specific action, like signing a petition
• Turn supporters into volunteers
• Increase sale of a product or service
• Build visibility and authority for your brand or cause
• Solicit micro-loans
• Boost your following on Twitter or Facebook
• Spur people to register to attend an event
• Reduce operational costs by crowd sourcing tasks
• Test the efficacy of one donation button vs. another
• Enhance your site’s search engine rankings
• Increase the number of blog comments people post
• Reduce your site’s bounce rate (and increase stickiness)

All of these goals can — and should — be measured. And you’ll notice that while social media will be used to pursue and measure your progress in achieving many of these goals, others don’t involve social media at all. That’s OK. Social media should fold into your overall metrics program, not the other way around.

KPIs: How you’ll measure progress

Now that you have a list of goals, you’ll want to map them to Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. A KPI is simply a metric that you track to assess whether you are accomplishing your business goals. There are literally hundreds of KPIs that you could be tracking in a spreadsheet, but your team will want to identify only a handful that matter most — the ones that will specifically help you achieve your goals.

For instance, if you want to grow your list of supporters, you’ll be able to measure the number of newsletter or RSS subscribers. If you want more interactivity on your blog, you can measure the average number of comments that people post.

Following is a partial list of KPIs/social interaction metrics

• Blog comments
• Downloads
• Email subscriptions
• Likes or Fans
• Favorites (add an item to favorites)
• Followers (follow something / someone)
• Forward to a friend
• Groups (create / join / total number of groups / group activity)
• Install widget (on a blog page, Facebook, etc.)
• Personalization (pages, display, theme)
• Ratings
• Registered users (new / total / active / dormant / churn)
• Reviews
• Time spent on key pages
• Uploads (add an item, e.g. articles, links, images, videos)

There are dozens more, but you get the idea. Some of these social interactions may map to multiple goals. Last year the Interactive Advertising Bureau released a document detailing social media metrics and definitions.

Get strategic: Determine formulas for calculating success

We know of a lot of nonprofits and companies that simply maintain a spreadsheet, check it occasionally to see if the numbers are trending in the right direction and pay little heed to what they could be learning if they dug a little deeper. That’s what the rest of this article is about.

In an April 2010 whitepaper by Web Analytics Demystified and the Altimeter Group, the authors propose aligning KPIs to social business objectives and offer formulas for calculating success.

They set out a simple framework of four Social Business Objectives and associated KPIs:

• Foster dialogue: Share of Voice, Audience Engagement, Conversation Reach
• Promote advocacy: Active Advocates, Advocate influence, Advocate Impact
• Facilitate support: Resolution Rate, Resolution Time, Satisfaction Score
• Spur innovation: Topic Trends, Sentiment Ratio, Idea Impact

How to measure: Yes, social media can be quantified

You may have heard the cliché that social media can’t be measured. Let’s bust that myth. Here are some practical metrics methodologies to get you on your way:

Super Six Steps to Measurement

• Set your objectives
• Define your stakeholders
• Determine which metrics to use
• Benchmark against yourself over time or your competition
• Pick your measurement tool/technology
• Analyze the results and start over

Don’t overlook keyword search

Finally, don’t forget keyword search! It’s one of the key components of search marketing and should be a part of any metrics program you undertake. By analyzing your site and social media accounts for key words and phrases, you’ll be able to correct bad keyword choices and begin to drive more traffic from people searching for information about your cause or sector.

Source: www.socialbrite.org

Tips for Improving Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be an effective way to drive traffic to your website quickly, but small businesses too often make mistakes that undermine their campaigns.

Here's how PPC works: Through programs such as Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, marketers specify an amount they're willing to pay for each visitor who clicks through to their sites. They also indicate whether they want their ads to appear in search engine results or content blocks embedded within websites, or both. It's an auction-style system through which the advertiser that bids the most for a targeted keyword receives the most exposure.

Although PPC advertising may sound simple, plenty of beginners have created campaigns that generate little click-through action because they target the wrong keywords or lack a compelling message. So, consider these suggestions for avoiding the seven mistakes that most new advertisers make:

1. Avoid "broad match" keywords.

One of the biggest mistakes is ignoring the difference between choosing specific keyword match types and setting all keywords as "broad match," which means that your ad will appear not just for your chosen keyword phrase, but also for any similar phrases or relevant variations your advertising program deems appropriate. Although broad match placements can help increase your exposure, they can also attract irrelevant traffic that costs you money.

For example, a PPC ad with the broad match term "show ideas" could be displayed for the search query "baby shower gift ideas." Even though the search query contains the broad match term, it isn't a relevant match.

To avoid losing money on irrelevant clicks, focus on phrase or exact match keywords.

2. Separate search and content ad placements.

Search network placement refers to PPC ads that appear in search query results, while content network placement means websites that display PPC ads as blocks within their pages. Most new PPC marketers select both the search and content networks when they set up their first campaigns, and they usually use the same keywords, ad content and payment amount for each click.

But the specific queries and websites that trigger your content network placements can be significantly different than what yields results on the search network. Running the same ads on both networks, therefore, could cost you money in terms of irrelevant placements. Although customizing takes more time and effort, it's far more efficient to tailor your keywords, ad copy and keyword bids for each network.

3. Use negative keywords, too.

PPC marketers often fail to use negative keywords, which allow you to specify where your ad should not appear. For example, in our "show ideas" and "baby shower gift ideas" example, the words "baby," "shower" and "gift" could be designated as negative keywords to help eliminate such irrelevant ad placements.

4. Efficiently target ad campaigns. 

Many advertisers aren't precise enough in targeting their campaigns. To increase efficiency, take advantage of features in PPC accounts that allow you to specify who sees the ads.

Here are a few areas to consider in targeting your campaigns:

• Multiple countries. If you plan to advertise in several countries, set up an ad group for each. Otherwise, limit your ad to U.S. placements.
• Micro-geographic focus. If you create an ad for a local business keyword -- "Mexican restaurants in Chicago," for example -- use the micro-geographic targeting features in your advertiser account to select the specific zip codes in which your ad will appear based on your business's delivery area.
• Time of day. If your ads generate the most conversions during a particular time of day, set them up to run only during those time periods.

5. Match landing pages to ads. 


Sending a visitor from your PPC ad to an irrelevant landing page not only disrupts the sales process, but also can also result in the assessment of lower ad quality scores. That means you'll pay more for each click and receive less exposure than advertisers with higher scores. Sending a visitor from your PPC ad to an irrelevant landing page not only disrupts the sales process, but also can also result in the assessment of lower ad quality scores. That means you'll pay more for each click and receive less exposure than advertisers with higher scores. Sending a visitor from your PPC ad to an irrelevant landing page not only disrupts the sales process, but also can also result in the assessment of lower ad quality scores. That means you'll pay more for each click and receive less exposure than advertisers with higher scores.

To avoid low relevance ad and landing page pairings, decrease the number of keywords. That will help make your landing pages as relevant as possible.

6. Test ad copy.

Writing effective ad copy can be difficult. Unless you test different versions of ads to see which perform best, you aren't maximizing the ROI of your campaign.

Most PPC platforms allow you to set up split tests that rotate different ads for each of your targeted keywords. To do the test effectively, adjust your setting so that ads will be served up randomly rather than according to the platform's formula of displaying the ad it determines will result in the most clicks.

7. Track your return on investment. 

To effectively manage PPC campaigns and improve your ROI, you need to know exactly which clicks are resulting in sales. To generate this data for free, tie your PPC account to Google Analytics to track which ads led visitors to your page and which visits resulted in sales. Without this information, you can't adjust your keyword bids or eliminate less effective ads and keywords.
To effectively manage PPC campaigns and improve your ROI, you need to know exactly which clicks are resulting in sales. To generate this data for free, tie your PPC account to Google Analytics to track which ads led visitors to your page and which visits resulted in sales. Without this information, you can't adjust your keyword bids or eliminate less effective ads and keywords.

Source: www.entrepreneur.com