Over my last few posts I’ve explained how to plan and run a social media campaign. In this post I will cover the final stage of the campaign – measuring the results. As an agency you will be expected to provide your client with a return on their investment, and if you are running the campaign in-house you will be expected to show similar results to senior management.

results against KPIs

You will have determined the KPIs in the campaign planning stage. Now each month you should measure your results against those KPIs to ascertain how successfully the campaign is in reaching the set targets. For example, a KPI might be to increase the traffic to a website by 10% in 6 months. Monitor the traffic to a website, calculate the percentage increase (or decrease) and report back to the client.

monthly metrics

As well as providing clients with results that match their KPIs you should also provide the following statistics where possible on a monthly basis:

• Number of fans, followers, subscribers etc.
• Number of video or content views
• Volume of user comments posted to a blog, profile or posted content
• Retweets or peer-sharing statistics for related content and posts
• Comment or retweet resonation (number of user comments multiplied by how many followers or friends each user has)
• Company website traffic statistics (where you have has access)

These statistics can usually be found in the dashboards of the social media channels you are using. Alternatively freely available tools such as Hootsuite can provide you with them.

ROI

The direct ROI will usually be measured by the client rather than their agency since it will involve them comparing things such as revenue gained from social media channels against revenue from other channels. Generally they will not want to share this type of information.

conclusion

Measuring the results of a campaign not only shows whether it is a success or not but can also indicate which specific channels are more effective. With this information you can either abandon less successful activity or change it. Likewise if a particular social network is producing outstanding results you can ramp up your activity in it.