How will you measure your results?

A successful social media strategy takes time, persistence and planning. You need to monitor progress, celebrate successes and share the results both internally and externally.

Once you have worked out your goals and what social media platforms you are going to use, how are you going to measure them? Will it be by the number of fans or followers, the amount of ‘shares’ or ‘retweets’ you get? The traffic to your website? Volume of interaction with your social media profiles? your membership or subscription numbers?

Monitoring and assessing tells you if your goals are being met or if you need to adjust your efforts. It is important to document statistics before you start out so that you can track progress and measure increases in membership, listener numbers or a particular behaviour.

We suggest you document your statistics weekly and after 3-6 months move to monthly. This will help to justify the time and resources spent on social media to management, boards and stakeholders. And to yourself! You need to keep enthusiastic about your social media activities to ensure they are relevant, genuine and worthwhile.

Top tips

• The back end analytics in Facebook and LinkedIn can really help you see what your audience is engaging with and finding useful. Although you will know instinctively what is working, sometimes hard data and pretty graphs can help explain to others or make reports look appealing.
• By tracking what your audience responds to in your social media profiles you’ll know what to spend time on and what is not so popular – as you go you’ll learn what makes your audience react to your call to action or why they interact with your profiles.
• Be sure to share your progress with everyone involved at your radio station – even the small wins are encouraging.

Learn more

• How to Use the new Google Analytics Social Reporting Tool: Social Media Examiner
• How the Pros Measure Social Media Marketing Success: Mashable

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