Measuring social media: A step-by-step guide for newbies
By Alexandra Reid
Over the last two weeks, I have taught our readers how to grasp the basic concepts required for monitoring and managing social media so they can be more effective in marketing their businesses on these channels. As the last in my three-part series, this post discusses how to measure the information received through the first two processes to provide actionable insight required to carry out successful, long-term social media strategies.
In earlier posts, I explained how to develop a social media strategy and carry it through and how to track social media efforts and reach your benchmarks. Your strategy should include your social media goals, determined by analyzing your business to decide what you want and are able to achieve through social media and what you are able to offer your audiences as well as other businesses to understand what they are doing successfully so you can compete. You can also look at reports and other key benchmarking data, provided by organizations such as MarketingSherpa, MarketingProfs and Forrester. Your strategy should also include your plan for measuring success, laying out your key performance metrics and how you will collect and analyze the data. I suggest you read these posts first to provide you with a good starting point for today’s discussion. This post will provide details on how to actually measure social media, including tools and measurement methods we employ.
