Marketing teams constantly strive to determine the ROI of their different strategies and campaigns. Some of the most common KPIs that teams measure are: 

  • The level of engagement with campaigns;

  • The number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs);

  • The number of opportunities;

  • The number of sales from marketing efforts. 

Social media marketing is tricky to measure in terms of return on investment (ROI). 

Social media is just one piece of the pie for building brand awareness, trust, and authority. So it can take time to find a lead affected by social media, whether it was the first, second, or third time they interacted with the business. Regardless, suppose a potential customer discovers your brand in some other way. In that case, chances are they will do their research and poke around. Therefore, a consistent and robust social media presence is vital. And with 1 in 3 customers using social media to discover new brands, products, and services, the importance of a solid social media strategy shouldn't be overlooked. 

So we've explained the importance of social media marketing, but how exactly do you measure your efforts to determine whether campaigns work with the ultimate goal of boosting your ROI? We've got you covered! Read on for helpful tips to keep in mind and strategies to help you track your social media efforts.

It's not just about your follower count

If you're gaining more followers, your efforts must be working. Right? You should never judge how well your social media efforts are going by how many followers you have. While you should always consider your audience growth rate, it should only be one small part of determining your ROI. 

Ultimately, engagement on social media is critical, and we're not just talking about likes. Social media users commenting on your posts or even resharing them is a big deal because it gives you more chances to speak to your audience. You're speaking WITH your audience, not AT them. What's more, positive social media interactions bring many benefits. 

In fact, due to positive social media interactions with a company, 78% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand, and 76% of consumers are more likely to recommend that brand. 

Tracking your social media efforts 

Suppose you're not accurately tracking your social media efforts. In that case, you're simply creating social media posts, sending them into the cyberspace abyss, and hoping for the best. And at some point, someone on your team will ask where and how you're tracking social media engagement. 

But what exactly should you track? Some social media metrics you can track include (but are not limited to): 

  • Follower growth rate over time 

  • Likes or reactions

  • Comments 

  • Mentions or tags on different profiles

  • Reach (How many users have seen your post) 

  • Impressions (How many times a post has been viewed. Theoretically, the same person could view your post 3 or more times) 

  • Views on videos 

  • Website traffic generated from social media

How you track these numbers and share the results of social media campaigns with your team is up to you, whether it be through a spreadsheet or a shared dashboard. However, CRM platforms can typically track your social media engagement. By monitoring your social media efforts on your CRM platform, other teams like Sales and Customer Success can have complete visibility. Aside from that, CRM platforms like Hubspot can allow you to schedule posts as well. 

List building from social media engagement 

You can also measure the return on investment of your social media marketing by making lists of the contacts your campaigns bring in for your business. By doing this, you can engage in social selling and retarget leads with other efforts like email marketing campaigns. You can also see whether leads engaged with a webinar shared on LinkedIn or liked a Tweet on Twitter. Our List Building from Social Media Engagement Wrkflows can help you do all this and more. 

These Wrkflows integrate social media analytics with Google Analytics, Salesforce, Hubspot, or your CRM of choice. This will help you better understand engagement patterns and tailor follow-ups and campaigns to boost your efforts even more. 

These workflows guarantee that you receive all lead opportunities. Generating lists of leads from social media efforts is a great way to measure and share the ROI of your campaigns and determine what's working and what isn't.

Use your results to boost your social media marketing efforts 

Once you've tracked your results, what do you do with them? Beyond showing off the ROI of your social media efforts, you can replicate successful posts and campaigns and scrap the ones that need to be fixed. You can use what you've learned to create new campaigns that may have a more substantial impact. 

But the most important thing is to operate efficiently at your core so that you can put your focus and time into creative thinking to develop unique strategies. And automation can help you do just that! Wrk's Platform has a variety of Wrk Actions that will take your social media strategy to the next level. 

Want to try them out for yourself? Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Wrk's Self-Serve Platform today!