As a business owner, you know that it’s important to market your products and services in the best way possible. You may have tried social media marketing. You’re posting and getting responses to those posts, but how do you know if your efforts are successful? By successful, we mean, do they support your overall business goals? These questions are important ones to ask regularly when you participate in social media marketing activities.

Here are 6 ways to know if your social media marketing is successful:

1. Social Listening
   People want to have their voices heard. Your social media followers are no exception. Social listening is how you hear what followers are saying about your brand. These conversations can happen in the form of reviews or regular postings. This allows you the opportunity to respond to their concerns and possibly even gain their business as nearly half of all social media users purchase from brands that are responsive to their followers.

   With existing customers, social listening can be valuable in determining if your social media marketing or other efforts are effective. Social media reviews are the new word of mouth. They influence over 80% of purchase decisions. They also can damage your reputation if you don’t respond well enough. If followers complain about your product or service on social media, you can respond, quickly and publicly, showing other followers your concern for your customers.

2. Social Monitoring
   You may not think that what your competitors are doing on social media matters to your business, but it does. That is why social monitoring is so important. By social monitoring, we mean seeking conversations about your brand, products, services, competitors, customers, and other topics relevant to your business.

   Paying attention to these conversations, like those among your followers, allows you to respond to social media users’ questions and concerns. You may wonder where you’ll find the time to do this. Fortunately, Google Alerts and other similar tools can send notifications whenever certain topics relevant to your business appear on social media and other platforms.

3. Look at the Data
   Like all of your marketing efforts, your social media marketing produces data that can be used to inform your decisions. Fortunately, many social media platforms come with built-in analytics that can be used to create reports. For example, Twitter Analytics offers a variety of reports to see how your account and content are performing on the platform.

   If you have multiple social media accounts, it may be helpful to create a spreadsheet with data from all of them so you can compare your performance on each like how many followers you have and how much they engage with your social media. This can show you where to invest most of your social media marketing efforts.

4. Branding Across Platforms
   Most business owners understand the importance of branding. Your brand’s colors, logos, and other design elements are what identify your business in the marketplace. This is why it’s important to make sure your brand is consistently represented across your social media platforms.

   Although each platform has its own creative requirements, like word count for posts or image sizes, your brand elements should still reflect your brand while meeting these standards. Make sure your brand’s voice is evident in all written content. For visual content, make your logo your profile photo and use your brand colors when designing advertisements.

5. Mind Your Budget
   One of the best parts of paid advertising is the ability to control your budget, especially on social media. Along with metrics related to content and engagement on social media, you should look at the amount of money you’re spending on advertising and how much of a return on investment you’re getting. Then, you can adjust your budget and ad campaigns accordingly.

   Another factor in your budget comes from who is managing your social media. Along with advertising, you need to factor in the staff hours or agency fees paid to the person or agency taking care of your social media. This contributes to overall ROI. It can also help you determine if it’s easier to manage social media in-house or hire an outside agency.

6. Look Outside of Your Social Media
   When it comes to digital marketing, everything you do is connected in some way. That is why the success of your social media marketing can be tied to activities off of social media. Website traffic, newsletter sign-ups, and sales coming from social media are examples of these activities that can be tracked.

   Data collected from these activities can be compared to other relevant data. For example, you can compare the amount of website traffic coming from social media to the amount of traffic you get from search engines. By seeing where most of your website traffic is coming from, you can focus your marketing efforts on those platforms.

Want to Know if Your Social Media Marketing is Successful?
Experts recommend doing a total social media audit every year or so. However, it is important to keep track of your social media marketing efforts year-round. If you need help with your social media marketing or other data, contact Links Web Design for a free consultation today!

Links Web Design is a digital media marketing agency in Bangor, ME, and Fruitland Park, FL.