5 Common Mistakes When Measuring Social Media ROI

August 24, 2009 | Sarah Chong

Okay, you have put yourself out there in the social media world, followed a few people, posted a few links and sparked a couple of conversations, what’s next?

The reason why you first embarked on this journey is because you think it will benefit your business and bring you returns. The biggest mistake you can make in social media marketing is failure to measure these returns. We have seen how to measure social media ROI but what are some of the common mistakes that people make when measuring social media performance?

1. No clear definition of the goal

If you don’t have a clear goal, you are not going anywhere. You are looking at several performance indicators (especially irrelevant ones) but you don’t exactly know what they are telling you. You are unable to measure the monetary value of your traffic and conversion rate. If you have no target, there’s nothing for you to measure.

Snapshot 2009-08-22 19-13-24

2. More followers and fans = higher returns

It’s flattering to have a multitude of followers and fans but that does not directly translate to higher returns. Many people measure success according to the number of fans and followers they have on Facebook and Twitter respectively.

How many of your followers are reading your tweets? How many are clicking on the links you shared? How many are making actions on your website? Did you ask these questions when you look at your growing follower base?

Getting more followers is one thing, converting them into sales leads is an entire different story.

3. Not counting clicks

I find it a total waste when businesses share links on Twitter but don’t measure the number of clicks they get. By measuring clicks, you can estimate how many people are interested in your content and products. Not every follower is going to see your link and not every one of them is going to pay it much heed.

Measuring impressions according to the number of followers you have is a grave mistake. Measuring retweets does not give you much information either. People may be reading, clicking and interested but they may not be much of a retweeter (and vice versa).

URL shorteners can be used to measure clicks from Twitter and total clicks on the shortened URL. Even so, the numbers are most of the time not too accurate. It’s best to use web analytics to measure how many views your link destination received from each of your social media referral sites.

4. Neglecting search

Real-time search is a great tool for studying what people are talking about, with regards to your brand and products. With a simple search, you can see people’s updates that contain your brand or product keywords. If people are not talking about you, you probably need to work harder in building your presence.

Even though search cannot help you measure ROI in real numbers, it gives you a good gauge of how much influence you have in social media.

5. Focusing on number of visitors

When we talk about web analytics, there is far more to it than just measuring traffic. Knowing your traffic is important but it doesn’t tell you a lot of details, which are equally essential.

What to focus on depends a great deal on your business objectives in social media. You can measure time spent on site, page views and amount of referral traffic from each social media tool.

For example, if are using Twitter and your goal is for visitors to land on your “Enquiry Form” page, looking at number of visitors wouldn’t give you valuable insights. Setting your goal on web analytics will help you find out how many visitors from Twitter are acting according to your goal.

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Tags: Mistakes, ROI, Social Media

strategic_growth_advisors

Thanks for the insightful post, Sarah.

Although we are living in the modern digital age -- with most of our work cut out for us by high-end computers and modern tools which were only imaginings in sci-fi novels forty years ago -- no foolproof system still has been created to make our social media experience as flawless as possible.

In my own perspective, I think that engaging in social media is a commitment: it is more than posting links to articles, attracting visitors to your webpage, as well as having a multitude of followers.

Making a successful impact in social media requires effort, patience, and, of course, the diligence to look out for the mistakes Sarah provided here.

Sarah Chong

I can't help but agree on what you just said. Many businesses out there are just putting themselves out there, naively thinking that its enough to just appear on social media. Many lack commitment and the the effort to interact and participate.

It's sometimes frustrating to see people adopting the wrong approach altogether. They lack a brand voice and put themselves above their consumers. Businesses need to start looking at their customers eye to eye and make conversations - that's the purpose of social media anyway.

Thanks for sharing. Appreciate your comments!