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How Can I Tell if My Social Media Is Working?
The Sprocket Report
This article was updated on 1/30/2024 with the article entitled “Do You Worry That Social Media Marketing Is Not Worth Your Time or Money?”
We’re all talking and reading about social media and you may be wondering how much of the discussion is simply hype. You’ll hear strong opinions both ways, but the bottom line is: How is YOUR bottom line doing?
Being a business owner is not for sissies. It’s a whole lot of hard work and, let’s be honest, that means some details don’t get the attention they deserve. Agile, seat-of-the-pants management is common. Measuring how those decisions actually affect income, well, to put it charitably, it’s much less common. Which makes it really difficult to know if you’re throwing your money away on social media marketing or not.
There is an abundance of free and low-cost tools to help you. Choosing and setting up that tool is probably the biggest hurdle for most entrepreneurs, so asking for help might be the best option just to get off Square One.
Tools will help you see how many followers you’ve gained and which posts are the most popular, but none of that is as important as knowing how much money you have in the till at the end of the day. Is the activity and growth on your Facebook page correlating to activity in the store and a growth in sales? Don’t use your gut to measure – compare your financial statements and your online analytics.
Better still is tracking how many sales are the direct result of your social media efforts. Offer coupons and deals that are only available to your followers. Link to a special sign-up landing page to track leads. And don’t forget to just ask “How did you hear about us?”
Of course even the best social media marketing doesn’t guarantee sales. There are many reasons why a customer doesn’t complete the entire journey to the cash register. Maybe the price point is too high or they got distracted. Evaluating the entire sales funnel on a regular basis will help fine-tune that process. What social media marketing does provide is branding, buzz and lead generation to fill the funnel with more – and more targeted – prospective customers. Proportionately more prospective customers should equal proportionately more sales.
Never done any social media marketing? Sometimes things start slow and need time to build traction, but those first results can be exciting. After all, if you have 5 followers and add 5 more, you’ve increased 100%! But add another 5 and that’s only a 50% increase. The pace will change, but the important thing is to keep growing. You’ll be shocked to see how quickly you lose ground if you slack off on your social media efforts.
We definitely advocate using social media, but if you don’t set a marketing goal and don’t have a way to measure your progress, it’s easy to become disillusioned and quit. Sprocket wants to be your business partner for the long run, so if you want to know more about social media marketing, contact us today. We’re happy to help.
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Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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