Social media: what’s the point? Yes, you have a ton of followers, engagement and so on, but is anyone actually BUYING anything? Or is it that all your efforts are in vain?!
Luckily, thoughts like those above are actually fairly quite common, and to be able to understand the value of social you just have to put a few measures in place. The truth is, social media can actually have a tremendous impact on your business, and you just have to know how to use it properly.
Don’t Be Afraid Of Paid Advertising
Some paid advertising can actually go a long way in helping drive engagement, and ultimately bring people to your site. Don’t confuse this with buying ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ from click farms – these are a really bad idea because these people will never actually engage with your posts and thus hide all your updates from your genuine followers because you’ll look really uninteresting when it comes to algorithms! Instead, paying to boost posts for example is great, because it ensures more people in your feed actually see your stuff.
Use Tracking Software
Tracking software like that offered by Calltracks is a really good way of monitoring which sales calls comes through as a result of your social media posting. It allows different numbers to be shown to different customers, depending on where they find you. The number will vary depending on if it’s the website, Facebook, Twitter or somewhere else that they first saw you. That way, you can put more attention to those areas which aren’t necessarily converting as well as others, which is great for e-commerce.
Make Use Of Google Analytics
Google Analytics will be able to tell you where the traffic is coming from to your site, whether it’s referral traffic, organic or direct. You can also use the Google URL Builder as part of Google Analytics to place a unique and trackable link to every campaign, so you can attribute successes to the right posts. Google Analytics can also be used to track goals (for example the end goal being a purchase) or to monitor assisted conversions (where somebody started on your social pages and didn’t purchase at that moment – but returned later and did). There are a world of options, and best of all, Google Analytics is free!
Remember…
It won’t always be possible to say with 100% certainty which successes are the responsibility of your social channels, but as you can see, there are ways to track. Whether this is implementing these tracking codes, setting goals or monitoring traffic, or through a combination, it really helps to see where you’re at!
