We have these awesome things called analytics programs. They track everything, as long as you give them a cookie (that’s how it works, right?). Or maybe they give you a cookie. Either way, no one is licking my cookie dough spoon but me… Get your mind out of the gutter.
As far as I can tell, everyone is telling us to be more active in social media. And I agree. But it’s hard to say that I’m going to go spend three hours of my day plugging content on social networks without having to prove to myself that I didn’t just muck about and spam my friends/fans/followers/likers homepages. I need to see what my efforts have wrought. The fruits of my labor, if you will.
We produce a lot of content here at Slingshot and some of it we specifically create, target and promote in the hopes of going viral. So far, no zombie apocalypse, but there’s always hope. Regardless of viral-ity (not a real word, is it?), we’re still pretty successful. We’ve had infographics that have succeeded, they’ve garnered page views, links, shares, likes, diggs, stumbles, and the list goes on. I’m pretty sure one of them even stampeded cattle through the Vatican.
For instance, this stallion, didn’t have quite the traditional social sharing we had planned on. But thanks to StumbleUpon, it’s had over 30K unique page views and generated over 106 new links – all unique domains. This one, had tremendous success in links, but its social impact is wholly unknown to us. Due to the fact that the infographic was uploaded in many different areas, it was difficult for us to keep full view of the sharing. From this upload though, we generated, 111 tweets, 60 likes, 66 diggs, and 23 LinkedIn shares. Not pittance, but nowhere near the social success of the obesity infographic.
But they both accomplished the root goal: to generate new, unique linking domains. And that’s what any good social media campaign needs. Clear goals. If you want traffic, then total page views and referring traffic are your metrics. If you want links, then total links and new unique linking domains are your metrics.
Social media ROI isn’t difficult. It’s about choosing what you need to improve how. Don’t ask me, “How can my social media efforts benefit me?” Ask me, “What benefits are affected by my social media strategies?” That question is easier to answer, look at your analytics. Are your current social media efforts driving traffic from referral sources? Are your visits from branded or direct traffic increasing? Or are you just getting people to click your like button and not your buy button?
Until next time,
Cookie Monster
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