Social Media: What is All the Fuss About? Final Stage

Stage Five: Evaluation

Many smaller businesses are interested in directly aligning their social media strategy with their sales funnel. Some of the core measurement metrics to do this are:

	Facebook	YouTube	Twitter	LinkedIn
Retention Rate
Sales Volume per Customer
Revenue per Customer
Customer service Costs per Customer

The metrics you use should be directly linked to your social media objectives. If you want to clearly to see an ROI and monetised conversion rates associated with social media channels the best way to do this is by linking Google Analytics (free software)  to your website and setting up conversion goals. Further discussion on this topic needs a whole new article! However, you can visit http://www.google.co.uk/analytics  for more information. If you are considering going down this route make sure that every social media campaign is tagged by using Google Analytics’ ‘URL Builder’.

Summary

Hopefully, this article has given you a general overview of social media and how it can be utilised effectively to help generate leads, aid customer retention and build brand awareness. This article has only just scraped the surface of this topic – there are so many different aspects to social media and its uses that it is impossible to cover everything in a few pages. Sometimes, businesses rush into using social media channels because they are free and easy to set up – don’t fall into this trap because you can damage your reputation more by not understanding the characteristics of the medium being used. It is also a time-consuming marketing tool, so be sure it’s right for your business before rushing in.

 

This article has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester) @WSofManagement.