Inexpensive Ways to Measure Social Media Results

Social media marketing is one of the best ways to get your product or company known to the public. It is fast; it is cheap- if not, free. All you have to do is to register your product or company to Facebook, Twitter, or even YouTube. These sites are visited by literally millions and millions of people every single day. With just a few strategised types and clicks, you can already promote your business and expect it to reach out to tons of people every day. How is that for a good start? For a big or small business, this marketing strategy is not to be disregarded.

If you have already registered to these sites, then, Congratulations is in order! That is the first step. What next? Do you just leave the site be? Definitely, no! Aside from all the efforts of making accounts for your new products to be promoted online, what else is there to be done?

Listen To Your Customers

Social media marketing is pointless if you don’t pay attention to your customers. You have the chance to connect with them; grab it!

And how do you measure listening? Take Twitter, for example. When you choose to follow potential clients, make sure that you monitor their tweets every day. You need to be aware of what they say about your business. You can answer questions; extend help when you can. Customers are always impressed with businesses that care for them. With Twitter, you can monitor the number of people you are actually helping and if the number of people is actually increasing. You will also have the chance deal with customer issues that may lead to negative impressions about your business.

After identifying all the problems through measurement, immediately take action for improvement. Delaying can only cause problems and sustained customer issues. After taking action, you can measure its impact through the cost savings or additional revenue.
Use a Rating System

This is one of the best strategies when you want to measure your hard work that you invested in social sites to make your business known. When posting an update about your business launch in Facebook, for example, you will notice that people will start liking the post. The following day, you post another update of your launch, and you will notice that your posts don’t just get “likes”; they also get comments. Not just that, people will start sharing the post, which is better for you and your business. Likes do indicate support, and comments signify more interest of the post. Lucky if you get shares, for the updates will go beyond your page!

A tiered point system for Facebook used for measurement may look just like this:
Shares = 10 points/share
Comments = 5 points/comment
Likes = 1 point/like
   
Also a similar thing for Twitter:
Reply = 1 point/ reply
Retweet = 5 points/ retweet
   
You can create a numeric goal for objectives at the start of your campaign. The tiered points system will be your tool to measure the kind of engagement people commit to your posts and updates. By adding up the numbers during your campaign, you can see if you are improving in terms of reaching your goal or not.

Create More Value. Sell. Measure.
   
Sounds easy, right? So what’s behind this strategy? Say for instance you are a proud restaurant owner, and you have a new entry in your menu. The goal is to have 200 people to try the new entry over the approaching weekend. Are you reaching for the stars? Not quite, if you use a good strategy and a add a few good punches to your new menu entry, things may just work out fine for you.

Now, you are so convinced that your new dish is a hit, but it won’t reach that level if people don’t get to try it. A visually appealing entry can be very attractive when posted in Facebook or Instagram. Make sure the photo can make mouths water. However, instead of solely talking about how delicious your dish is, you can start posting articles and FAQs about healthy eating, which will eventually lead to your newly created dish as one of the foods that qualify as healthful. The good thing about that is your customers will feel that you care for their well-being, and it starts with you being a responsible restaurant owner who serves healthful food.

With that value added to your new food entry, you can use your Facebook or Twitter again to offer coupons for your restaurant. You will be able to measure the fruits of your labour through the number of people who redeem the coupons.
   
You can actually go back to Use a Rating System- the tiered system to be more specific, as evaluation to see if you’re moving closer to your goal or not. You can also create landing pages for the customers to easily purchase or download what you are currently selling to them. Make sure that the landing page is unique or specific, so that you can clearly see or measure the success of your campaign.

Social media marketing should be inexpensive- or if not, free- right? These measuring guidelines will save you from settling with expensive measurement tools. Take advantage of social media now to market your business!