A guide to measuring social media ROI

There’s a popular misconception that it’s difficult to use targeted metrics to measure social media’s return on investment (ROI). That’s not true. Nor is social media only good for measuring brand awareness.

The fact is social media can offer some of the best metrics for measuring ROI. All you need to do is set your success guides—what you want to achieve and how long it will take—and measure your results against them.

Here are six simple metrics for the main social networks that you can use to measure your social media ROI across earned, owned and paid media:

1. Blogger outreach

A key component of many (if not most) social media campaigns, blogger outreach programs can offer some of the best results of any marketing tactic. Measuring your success isn’t too difficult, either. All you have to do is determine the answers to the following questions:

2. Twitter

Twitter not only offers instant eyeballs, but great returns. Again, measuring your impact is relatively simple:

3. Facebook

Although it has its critics (including me), Facebook offers some great built-in tools and demographic options to help gauge a campaign’s success:

4. Google+