How to create a social media analytics plan

Many businesses and entrepreneurs understand the importance of social media marketing, but don’t really understand if their marketing plan is really working.  In fact, in a recent survey from BazaarVoice, only about half of the businesses using social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn have any idea as to a return on investment.  While they created a social media business plan, they never created a corresponding social media analytics plan designed to track performance.

Before doing anything in social media marketing, you need to have a clear understanding of your overall vision, what your goals will be, and how you will track and measure the success of your social media marketing.  In other words, you must create a social media analytics plan.

Social Media Analytics Plan Guidelines

• Choose key performance indicator metrics that translate into business context ( sales & revenue, new leads & customers, opt in rates, customer interaction, conversions, etc.).  Look for more than just number of friends, fans, followers, or viewers.
• Create specific social media analytics metrics for each social network site and specific elements of your website
• Define actionable social media analytics

The most important guideline above is to define actionable metrics. Obviously these types of social media analytics metrics are going to be unique to your business, but here are a few examples:

• Number of people in a specific location who follow your company on Twitter
• Reduction in sales cycles
• Reduction in support costs
• Increase in product reviews
• Product improvement suggestions from [specific social network] Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media-analytics-action-plan-defining-kpis/20127/#ixzz1FYT4myRs

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