Measuring ROI in Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool that can quickly generate brand awareness and increase overall exposure to large market segments. For instance, if you’re an author that is beginning a social media campaign to promote your newest hardcover release connecting with your online community is only part of the process. Beyond numbers of fans and followers, you need to know what people are saying about your brand, what’s the depth of conversation regarding you as an author, how engaged are readers with your books and more.
There are quite a few ways that you can measure how your readers are interacting with you in the social media sphere. Some are costly, but they deliver robust data that can be used to adjust your campaign as needed. On the other hand, there are some fantastic free tools available that do a fair job delivering snapshots of your fans and their sentiment toward your book, or brand. Do some digging to find the tools that will work best to meet your needs and fit your budget.
Don’t be overwhelmed by the data that you start pulling. If you’re a writer, words come easily, whereas numbers may seem more challenging. Focus on identifying trends in your data and ignore information that isn’t relevant. Spot increases and decreases over time to give yourself a benchmark to help gauge whether your social media efforts are succeeding or failing.
Make sure to overlay sales numbers with your social media data. If you’re using Google Analytics to measure conversions on your book’s landing page, check for spikes and dips and then compare how specific social media efforts may have effected those outcomes. Watching sales and measuring the ROI through social media will be determined by the set of metrics that you define. For example, if you are more concerned about sales instead of site registration then you’ll need to shift your measurement and focus accordingly.
However you choose to evaluate your book’s or brand’s social media investment just remember to be open-minded about the numbers. They can be your friend and help you find opportunities, identify mistakes and tell you what to continue or abandon.
