If you have ever wondered if all the time you spend on social media marketing is worth it, then there are a few things you need to know. “Is it worth my time?” and “Is it even working?” no longer need to be rhetorical questions.
We are going to focus on the most important question, “is it even working?”, because the answer to that will make it clear if it’s worth your time.
And, we are going to get practical so, by this end of this blog you will know if social media marketing is worth your time.
Step 1: Define Your Goals
What is it you hope to achieve through social media marketing? Which of these statements ring true to you.
- Brand awareness: “I want more people to know about and recognise my brand/business”.
- Community connection and engagement: “I want to interact with my audience to build community, relationships and a sense of connection to my brand”.
- Website traffic: “I want more traffic to my website”
- Sales: “I want to increase my sales”.
These are all things everyone wants in their business. So, it’s important to focus on which of these things you hope to achieve through social media marketing itself.
Step 2: Analyse Your Data
Accessing the data: You will need to look at your Facebook Insights as well as your website Google Analytics
Analysing the data: How to go about analysing the data available will depend on what your social media marketing goal/s are.
Brand awareness can be measured by Facebook impressions and reach (Facebook Insights), and direct website traffic (Google Analytics).
Community connection and engagement can be measured by your engagement rate (Facebook Insights data). Engagement rate can be calculated 6 different ways including Engagement Rate based on Reach (ERR) and Engagement Rate by Posts (ER). It is good to calculate your engagement rate using a variety of methods to get a deeper understanding of whether your social media marketing is successful.
Website Traffic can be measured by Google Analytics Acquisition and Source/Medium metrics as well as by Facebook Insights clicks metrics. These need to be used in conjunction with one another to get a full understanding of your social media marketing results.
Sales can be measured by Google Analytics conversion to sale data and/or other in-built analytics associated with your e-commerce platform.
Hot Tip: If accessing and analysing the data is something you are unfamiliar with or that feels a little of out of reach, consider engaging a social media marketing consultant to do a report for you and/or teach you how.Step 3: Amalgamate Your Findings
Once you have gathered all your data, you need to make sense of it.
Put together a little report of all your findings so you can see the story that is being created by the data and begin to understand if your social media marketing is working for you.
In short – look at your goal, look at the findings in the data. The answer should be clear.
Hot Tip: This is a great practise to undertake on a monthly basis to ensure that the time you are spending on content creation, curation, copy-writing and scheduling is worth it. And, to ensure that you are on a path of continuous improvement with your social media marketing.