HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI (4 of 5)
HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI: Part 4 (If you missed it, check out HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
Let’s face it, most business owners starting to utilize and leverage social media want to know what the return on investment is with social media. Honestly, social media lacks easily and clearly measurable characteristics of other investments, but it IS very much possible to see and track the monetized return from engaging in social media.
Tip #4: Use 3rd Party Tools
Honestly, there are WAY too many different tools for measuring one’s impact (which works hand-in-hand with ROI). Since there are so many to choose from, I’ll just focus on two very important resources that business owners like you should be investigating.
oneforty.com
For most businesses, a trip to www.oneforty.com might feel intimidating at first due to the hundreds of applications (apps), tools, and resources that it has to offer. Fear not! This particular selection of digital treats offers user ratings and sponsored recommendations. Most of the way down the initial web page you will see a large squared section title, “What’s Essential;” this should be your next stop on the journey of social media enlightenment. There are 10 ‘essential’ types of resources, but ‘Analytics’ is the destination that you’re looking for; this will bring you to the top six analytical tools for your twitter account. Read the reviews and choose what best suits your specific fancy.
Alexa
It seems like so few people actually use www.alexa.com to monitor their websites, but there’s no time to start like the present. Alexa can install a toolbar to your web browser if you want it to; this toolbar will keep you posted as you browse the World Wide Web as to the ‘rank’ of the page that you are looking at. Ideally, people should want this number to decrease in pursuit of the #1 position (google). How this affects your social media ROI is by monitoring the “linking” websites that drive traffic to your website. The higher that social media sites rate in the listing of referring sites, the better the social media campaign. Ideally, if most of a site’s traffic is coming from social media, then success has been attained.
