How to track social media marketing results

It’s easy to jump into social media without really thinking through how it will work for you.

How are you going to determine the results (in fact, in a lot of cases, what do you WANT the results to be? But we’ll come to that in a future post)?

What should you be measuring? How can you measure it?

This great infographic from Infographic World offers answers. Not only does it tell you WHAT you should be measuring, but it tells you the tools you can use to give you the information you need.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

 

Think Social Media needs to take up all of your time? Think again!

One of the things I hear the most is how people stay away from social media because they think it will take up too much time, or they stopped ‘doing it’ as it sucked up their time.

This great infographic from Dendrite Park shows that this needn’t be the case. In just an hour a day you could:

  • Curate content
  • Write blog posts
  • Manage Facebook
  • Deal with Twitter
  • Explore Linkedin
  • Add to Google+
  • Use Social Bookmarking
  • Track and measure through Analytics

The accompanying article is well worth a read and might help you to get a handle on the time social media actually takes.

How do I add Google Analytics to my Facebook Fan Page?

We’ve been adding Google Analytics to clients’ Facebook fan pages over the past couple of days, and they’re loving it!

It’s not difficult to do – all you need is:

  • A Google Analytics account
  • A Facebook Fanpage
  • The FBML application
  • Some generated code
  • 10 minutes spare

There’s a fantastic guide to it here: How to add Google Analytics to your Fan Page

The basic premise is:

1) Add a new profile in Google Analytics

2) Use the Analytics Tracking code here to generate some code

3) Install the FMBL application on your fan page

4) Add the code generated in step 2 to the FBML page you want to track.

5) Check stats tomorrow!

The guide in the link above is great, and walks you through the process easily.

If, however, you’re having problems and can’t get it installed, then we’re offering a basic no frills installation in return for a donation. You can purchase it below. Why a donation? Because although it takes next to no time, we can’t offer it for free or we’d be inundated and have no time for ‘real’ work. This way, if Leigh spends 6 weeks adding Analytics code to Facebook pages, at least she’ll get paid for it! You can choose the amount you pay, so just pay what you think it’s worth.

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Be sure to track offline as well as online…

I’m always telling clients to track their marketing, and obviously it’s easy to do that online with the help of google Analytics or a real time webstats tool such as Clicky Analytics – knowing where your traffic is coming from, what it’s doing once it gets to your site and whether or not your efforts are working is a huge step in the right direction towards NOT wasting your efforts online.

But what about offline? Do you ask someone where they heard about you when they call? Are you tracking which efforts are producing calls and sales? If your website is focused on ‘getting the call’ and you’re not asking the people who call you where they found you, how do you know whether it’s an offline promotion or an online one?

Remember that not everyone will drop you an email / buy online straight away – some people will go away and think about it, maybe make a note of your number. others will just call because for them it’s easier.

Every time someone new contacts you on the telephone, or walks through your doors, you should be asking them how they found you, where they heard of you, what made them choose you – only then will you ahve a full and rounded picture of what you are doing, what works and what doesn’t.

Are YOU asking the right questions?

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photo credit: aussiegall

Google
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