48 Ways to Measure Your Social Media Efforts

A question that I receive A LOT...how effective is Social Media, and how do I measure it. What is the ROI...well, the R is "Leads". What is measured inbetween to insure we obtain qualified leads is also important. I came across a good article that summed it up, and the correlation to Automobile Manufacturing, which helps me:

"Consider automobile manufacturing as an analogy. There are an abundance of measures, from machining tolerances on shafts to the temperature in the paint room, which are vital to track during the manufacturing process. The C-level folks may not know or particularly care what these numbers are, but if those values are off, they will affect quality, which impacts rework and warranty claims, which impact manufacturing and repair costs, which impact the ROI of each vehicle.

Similarly, in social media marketing, there are numerous intermediate “process” measures that don’t fit into an ROI equation, but which are vital in optimizing social media efforts in order to minimize “I” and maximize “R.” These metrics don’t represent the goals of social media marketing in and of themselves, but are critical measures to help optimize processes to achieve the ultimate objectives."

Nine Blog Metrics

• Overall traffic
• Traffic quality (e.g. bounce rate, average time spent per visit)
• Most popular posts (indicates topics with highest interest)
• Search traffic
• Social media/network-referred traffic
• Other key sources of traffic (e.g., company website, newsletters, syndication sites)
• Number of RSS subscribers (regular readers)
• Number of email subscribers
• Top visiting organizations (measure of targeting effectiveness)

Six Twitter Metrics

• Total number of relevant followers (exclude the inevitable spammers and oddballs who seem to be attracted to any active Twitter account)
• Interaction (@ mentions)
• Retweets (reflects both level of engagement and quality of shared content)
• Most tweeted links (i.e., which content is most popular with followers)
• Influence (e.g., Klout and Kred scores)
• Brand and mention tracking (e.g., from HootSuite or other social media monitoring tool)

Six LinkedIn Metrics

• Number of company followers
• Recommendations on products or services
• Page views (of LinkedIn company overview)
• Unique visitors
• Click-throughs (on product links)
• Followers by industry, function and company

Five Facebook Metrics

• Number of Facebook page “Likes”
• Friends of fans (indicates an organization’s total potential reach on Facebook)
• Number of people talking about you (the number of unique people who have created content about the company page on Facebook in the past week)
• Weekly total reach (the number of people who have seen one of the firm’s messages on Facebook in past week)
• Most popular posts

Ten YouTube Metrics

• Number of subscribers to the company channel
• Total number of video views
• Change in views and subscribers over last 30 days
• Engagement measures:
  • Likes / dislikes
  • Comments
  • Shares
  • Favorites added or removed
• Top videos, last 30 days
• Playback locations (e.g., regular YouTube page, company channel, mobile device, etc.)
• Top traffic sources

Two Google+ Metrics

• Number of people / organizations in company circles
• Number of people / organizations that have company in their circles
• Note: Google has indicated that it plans to introduce more advanced analytics for Google+ soon

Ten Company Website and Cross-Social-Network Metrics

• Total social media-generated visits to the company website
• Lift in direct visits (an imprecise but correlated measure)
• Lift in branded search visits (another imprecise but correlated measure)
• Major social network visits by source
• Traffic quality by source
• Most-viewed pages by social media visitors
• Top visiting organizations (all social media sources)
• Top visiting organizations (by major social network)
• Lead conversions (all social media sources)
• Lead conversions (by major social network)

If you’ve utilized the first 46 metrics to continually monitor and adjust your social media activities, the final two—the real return on investment for b2b marketers—should validate and quantify the value of all your hard work.

[via Webbiquity]

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How Do You Make Your Website Tablet-Friendly?

As we move into the future, more tablet usage is coming into fruition. Not just by professionals, but by the public masses. It is more important then ever to insure that your website will be visible on a tablet, and look as it should on a tablet. I ran across an article that explains 5 suggestions to tweak your website:

"Ditch the drop-down menus. Instead, consider a showcase page for different sections of the site, better enabling tablet users to find all available subpages. If you want to keep your drop-down menus, create visual cues (like arrows) that show users the menu can be opened and expanded. 
Design for touch interaction. Tablet users aren't clicking or scrolling with a mouse, so design buttons the size of a fingertip instead of a cursor. Links placed too closely together will also frustrate users; remember that touching and swiping are the gestures to design for these days. 
Choose colors, textures and typography wisely. Bright background colors and patterns reduce the appearance of glare or smudges on an iPad or Blackberry Playbook. Avoid solid blacks that look like untextured voids. Ensure your font isn't too large or too small for tablet navigation. When in doubt, test on a tablet or two. 
Design forms to fit. Many company sites require users to fill out a form. Look yours over and ensure all fields are clear and easily accessible to tablet users. Avoid including too many fields, as longer forms on tablets are frustrating. 
The Po!nt: Think flat and touchy. The reading-and-browsing world is moving further in the direction of tablets, making it crucial that your site experience be as seamless there as it is anywhere else. A few tweaks could be all you need to ensure compatibility."

Read more: MarketingProfs

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