According to five separate surveys cited by eMarketer.com, site traffic was the number one metric that marketers used to measure social media marketing success in 2009. But, as eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey wrote in his company’s report “Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media,” site traffic “on its own it cannot justify heavier investment in social media.”
So, what other ways are there to measure success in social media marketing? What about contact growth? A contact means more than an IP address in Google Analytics, after all.
I’m not just talking about a growth in Twitter followers or Facebook friends here, however (though that’s part of it). What you really want when it comes to contact growth is a growth in your contact database. Whether you manually input intelligence on your social media contacts or you use a marketing platform that ties directly into a database (like JitterJam), it’s essential that you’re bringing data on your customers into a place where you’re in control, and where data can be stored for the long term (something Facebook and Twitter themselves aren’t particularly good at). You need to able to add communication channels, to add intelligence, and to segment your contact list. Only then will you be able to effectively turn those followers and fans into customers. And a high conversion rate, of course, is a metric that would certainly justify a heavier investment in social media.
What do you think? How are you measuring your success? Leave a comment below to let us know.
