In a previous blog post I wrote about how to track ROI from social media. In the article I speak generally about being aware of the total value gained from utilizing social media, not just revenue earned. Things like customer feedback, testimonials, industry expertise and branding all provide value added for businesses investing in social media. So you know the value, but what are the best metrics for understanding this value?
There are quite a few different metrics which you need to be aware of, but let me start by saying the obvious. You need to have analytics installed on all pages of your website. Whether you’re investing in SEO or social media campaigns, you need metrics. Here are some of the best metrics for analyzing ROI:
1) Traffic: This metric is the basis for everything below. Without traffic none of the other metrics matter. If you’re generating traffic, and it’s increasing on a monthly basis, then you’re on the right track. The next step is analyzing this traffic.
2) Unique Visitors: While traffic is one of the first metrics people look at to judge the success of a website, unique traffic is arguably just as important. The reason is that unique visitors allow you to see if your reach is expanding. If your traffic is increasing, but your unique visitors is falling, then your marketing efforts need to be improved to expand beyond your existing network.
3) Referring urls: When analyzing social media, referring urls is one of the most important metrics to pay attention to. If your goal is to utilize social media to drive traffic to your website to capture leads, then you need to make sure that you are in fact getting traffic from these social media sites.
4) Average Time on site: Simply put, the longer people spend on your website the better. There’s no doubt you want to keep people interested, but you need to dig a little deeper. Analyze the average time on the site from each of the top referring sites. You might notice that the referring traffic from Twitter is spending an average of 2:45 minutes more on the site than referring traffic from StubleUpon or Digg. You need to understand which referring sites keep people interested the longest; these are the most valuable.
5) Conversions: My favorite metric. Conversions = leads, and typically warm leads. You can create conversions for many different actions on your website, not just a completed contact form or an opt-in. Consider adding other conversions, such as when a user spends more than 5 minutes on the site. Then you’ll be able to see the percentage of your traffic that spends 5 minutes or more on your website. Also keep track of RSS subscribers. These should also be considered conversions, albeit not quite as valuable as an opt-in, but valuable nonetheless.
Social media has proven to be a worthwhile investment for many businesses. If you are looking to invest in social media marketing make sure you do your research first, and then make sure you have the metrics in place to analyze your campaigns.
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About The Author: Tom Sullivan is the senior account executive at Turbo Social Media. He has managed accounts for a wide variety of businesses, from small “Mom and Pop” businesses to multi-million dollar corporations. His success in business stems from his entrepreneurial drive and his desire to do “whatever it takes” for his clients to be successful.
Tom received his BA in Business Management Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a former collegiate rugby player and he enjoys playing softball, golfing, camping, and snowboarding in his spare time. 
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