20 Metrics To Effectively Track Social Media Campaigns
by Chris Bennet, Search Engine Land
Repost

Before I actually go into the different types of metrics you can set up to prove social medias value, I want to state the obvious. You should not only have analytics on every page of your site, but also make sure you add it to all your viral marketing campaigns in order to track the progress and overall success of the piece to evaluate how it relates to the rest of your website, your business and ultimately your bottom line.

I love social media because it can positively affect almost all aspects of your business both directly and indirectly. Directly, it generates increased brand awareness, traffic, leads, sales, subscribers, and more followers on social media sites. Indirectly, it effects search rankings as a successful campaign attracts backlinks and mentions in content which leads to higher search engine rankings. Social Media is so popular because it truly is that powerful, one campaign can affect your entire business.

Below is a list of metrics I use to track and prove ROI when analyzing my own sites or sites of my clients.

Traffic

Inside the traffic umbrella there are multiple metrics equally important when analyzing success. Page Views to the campaign, for one. Pretty obvious, but it all starts with how much traffic the specific page generates throughout the “Viral” life span as well as each month afterward.

Unique Visitors

Equally as obvious is the correlation between total visits and unique visits. This enables you to see what kind of new reach you gained as a result of the campaign.

Referring Urls

This is by far one of the most important to track and watch. Knowing which social sites send you the most traffic and which blogs and news hubs are picking you up is very valuable. This helps you manage the entire conversation, the influence these sites have in your niche and which of the sites sending you traffic is sending visitors that are engaging in your content. Understanding the referring sites that send you the best traffic will help you in your future campaigns.

Conversions

Not all campaigns generate direct sales/leads from the initial burst in traffic and referrals, but if your content does, make sure you are tracking where they came from. I have seen some sites which generally receive more leads from StumbleUpon, whereas other sites got leads from Digg, Twitter or a mention on Mashable. Also, know that despite what critics say, it is possible to get direct sales, leads etc. from social media and viral campaigns. The more you understand this, the easier it is to improve your next viral campaign. When companies start out in viral marketing, a lot of it can be shoot first and aim later, but as you better understand your conversions you can become a “Black Ops” sniper that has the target in the cross hairs before you ever pull the trigger.

Micro-conversions

Social Media can build upon small success to lead up to a reach of massive proportions. You may not get leads after your first influx in traffic, you may not sell crates full of product, but you can build a large audience and it is essential that you are tracking this. Set up outgoing click tracking with your analytics product to track RSS Subscribers, Twitter Followers, Facebook Fans and so forth – this will allow you to tie referral data to those clicks.

Seeing the referrals that are generating those outbound clicks is essential, as it helps you understand again which funnel of traffic does best on your site. Sphinn might only bring you a couple hundred unique visitors, but out of those you might get 100 new Twitter followers. Digg might send you 50,000 visits and generate nothing when it comes to new RSS or Facebook Fans. Again, the more you know about the hordes of traffic flooding to your site, the better feel you can get as to which communities might help you build your influence. I have had the most experience setting up outgoing link traffic with Google Analytics, Omniture and BLVD Status, it might be possible with other providers.

Tip: with BLVD Status, you can set up tracking on social buttons, like TweetMeme’s “Retweet” button or the “Digg This,” “Stumble This” buttons which will allow you to track down which referrals help you spread the word more than others.