Jul
14
2010

Social Media is Measurable

For whatever reason, there’s this perception that social media is not measurable – that you just do it because good things will happen.  ”What’s the ROI of your phone?” is one thing I’ve heard in comparison to measuring social media.  But, if you know what you are trying to accomplish ahead of time, there’s always something that’s measurable (even with a phone).
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Feb
22
2010

7 Basic Twitter Statistics

You’ve got a Twitter account and you’re tweeting and retweeting like a maniac.  How can you measure how well you’re doing?  Well first of all, what’s your goal for using Twitter? Increase sales? Collect leads? Knowing your goal is the first step for figuring out what you need to measure.  Once you have that, here are some basic measurements you may want to use to see how well you’re doing:
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Feb
25
2009

Want Your Statistics To Make Sense? Attach Dollars

dollartherittersImpressions, page views, hits, visits, unique visitors, clicks, CTR, conversions… what do they all mean? Unless you can translate them into how you’re doing business, they’re just numbers… and pretty useless ones at that.  While using the Internet to help your business may be relatively cheap, you still should understand what efforts are working and which are not.  Most Internet strategies require iterative improvements to get the most out of them – and that means knowing where you’re making money and where you’re not.

Every statistic should be related to the money you’re making.  If you’re selling things online, this is a bit easier, since you can track how many sales you’re making and how much per sale versus how many page views, visits, clicks, etc.  If you’re using the Internet to advertise your products or services, hopefully you have some way to collect leads online – or at least track that they came from online.  Then you should be able to figure out how many leads you get for how many actual sales (your $), which you then can relate to how many page views, clicks, etc. it took to get those.

As an example, many clients think they are doing really well with Internet advertising, but when we take a look at how much money they’re getting per conversion, click, etc., we often find that they’re spending more per conversion than they’re selling their product for.  It’s often hard to see this at first glance because people tend to look at overall spending when deciding what’s working.  If I spend $500 per month on Google ads, but I make $5000 per month, I might not think that’s a bad return.  But if you take a closer look, you may be getting most of your sales from other places, and you’re spending $500/month and not actually making anything from that traffic (if you’re spending more than you’re getting).

We all have a limited amount of time in our day.  If you can attach dollars to your Internet statistics, it will help you understand where you need to make changes, what’s working, and how to move forward.

(photo by theritters @ Flickr CC)

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