The best way to measure your social media efforts

Despite the five-year enthusiastic rush of companies to jump onto the social media bandwagon, social programs are still just a fraction of the total marketing budget. Still, as enthusiasm gives way to practicality, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to measure the effectiveness and impact of social marketing.

But how?

Rather than focus merely on return on investment (ROI), you might want to consider monitoring the quantitative and qualitative benefits of social marketing across four perspectives, a recent Forrester Research, Inc. report, “The ROI of Social Marketing,” says.

The author, Nate Elliot, makes a good case for the need to change the way we measure the contributions of social media programs. It is essential that social marketers use a combination of approaches to validate the business case of these programs.

Elliot refers to a balanced social media marketing scorecard that includes:

1. Financial

While increases in conversions and revenues per sale are the monetary results that are most obvious to see and easiest to measure, there are a host of other financial benefits to consider. These include:

2. Digital