When you review social media data and have a hard time understanding what it means and if your programs even work, you’re not alone in this struggle.
According to a study conducted by Regalix, getting insights and gauging social media effectiveness are two areas where marketers wish they were better at.
The most common social media metrics tracked are engagement and brand mentions, while a few marketers surveyed said they also extract consumer demographics and social graph data.
Unlike web sites, social media platforms are still relatively new, and standardizing data collection is still in its infancy. I expect this struggle to go on for quite some time. While it’s true that marketing automation software collects social media data, it can be really difficult to monetize or quantify what a share, a like, a re-post is really worth.
The most effective social media platform for engaging customers in and outside the buying cycle is LinkedIn. Twitter, YouTube, blogs and Facebook were rated as less effective in this report.
Sadly, the referral traffic generated by social media links is fairly low, as is the revenue amount. The other part of this issue is that all businesses, whether they are B2B or B2C, are expected to participate as content creators and distributors on relevant social media platforms. With few exceptions, it is widely understood that social media won’t generate direct sales, but even so, every marketer wants all the elements of her marketing program and campaigns to contribute positively to the company’s bottom line.
Social media is here to stay. It’ll change constantly and embrace more interactive content distribution, but for many prospects, social media is a starting point to discover multiple service and product providers, and to compare what they offer for getting the best deal.
I expect that social media data analysis will also evolve and become clearer as marketing automation tools become more effective at delivering data and offering report functions to break out the effectiveness of engaging in social media.
Does your marketing automation platform include basic social media analysis? Are you uncertain as to how it works? Measured Results Marketing can review your programs, people and software to see where the gaps are. Call us at 571-606-3106 or look at our services to learn more.
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Tags: demand generation, marketing automation, marketing automation toolsCategory