Social Media Benchmarks - 2 steps to start measuring ROI
Measuring your ROI (Return on Investment) for social media starts with your existing advertising — online and offline.
A common situation for business owners is that they have a website and do most of their advertising using traditional, offline media. The website has just a few pages, and hasn't really been updated since it was first put together. Often, the information on the site isn't even quite accurate anymore.
Step One is to find out what results your advertising is giving you today.
For your website, go to your hosting service and look for a "Logs" menu. My service (www.usebluehost.com) lets me choose to use Webalizer or AwStats (or both) for each of my sites. Yours will have the same, or similar, log programs.
These are the bits of software that tell you how many people are visiting your site. It also records useful information about how they got to your site, what keywords they used in a search, and which pages they visited.
Be sure your log program(s) is turned on for each site you have. I use both Webalizer and Awstats for every site.
Now do the same thing with your offline advertising. Take a look at each ad, brochure and coupon you use. What return is each one giving you?
Many clients are surprised when I tell them to track all their advertising. After we do it for a while, they're even more surprised at the money they save by getting rid of advertising that isn't working.
Step Two is to look at how well your advertising has been put together.
You can already see how these two steps fit together nicely. Many of my clients opt to do them at the same time for each advertising piece.
For your offline advertising, you want to get the help of a good copywriter. Avoid using the folks from the newspaper or radio station where you advertise. Remember that their first priority is to keep you advertising. Many ad reps don't have the knowledge you need to make your advertising effective.
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