How would you measure the ROI in social media?

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Photo credits: Mark Schaefer

Social Media is a communication tool, and its actually a word to describe a multitude of communication tools. So to discover the Return on Investment on Social Media, you have to look at each tool independently.

Not only that, you have to take a look at how you are using that tool.

Even replacing the word Social Media with the word Facebook does not make it into a question easily answered, as it depends on what you are doing with that communication tool (Facebook) and what you are trying to achieve.

When I work with customers in social media, we set a goal upfront. Usually this is lead generation/sales/drive traffic to stores and our points to measure are:

End goals:

• Filled out forms (leads)
• Sales (for e-commerce)
• phone calls
• sign ups for newsletters
• Info specified by lead source and day/time
• Number of people checking out products/services pages
• Number of people to see the location/directions/opening hours page (local services companies, restaurants)

We measure this through our inhouse developed lead tracking system Hatch.

What we measure ‘in between’ to track if we are getting to the end goal (mentioning the most important ones regarding goal achievement):

1. Number of conversations per social platform
2. Depth of conversation (how many replies)
3. How many people view the content
4. How many people view the lead generating page (or app)
5. Number of phone calls

Then we also analyze the audience who is consuming the content.
We use that information to check if that matches the potential leads we are getting and better suit the content to the audience that we want to get or is consuming it already.

For other great answers on the question: “How would you measure the ROI in social media?”, check out answers to this question on Quora.