With something as new and exciting as social media, it is often easy to forget that you do not want to receive an ROI from your efforts.  Marketing metrics do apply to social media.  To increase effectiveness and justify your expenditure to management, metrics should be regularly evaluated.

There is no set of guidelines on metrics to apply to social media.  No book or set mathematical evaluations has been written in stone yet.  However, in researching a marketing metrics article for the AMA Pittsburgh blog, I realized that some of what I found in Marketing Sherpa for that article can be applied to social media.

Some key findings from the Sherpa:

• Target reach percent: Using composition data from a service, such as comScore, determine how many impressions out of total served went to target, then divide by target reached by total target population.
• Increase in searches for a brand: Major search engines can provide this data.
  • Increase in all site traffic: Site analytics can provide this data.
  • Control survey increase: Ad effectiveness study simultaneously gathers and compares unexposed to ad-exposed audience to determine increase.
• Increase in any blog mentions (buzz): Nielsen Buzzmetrics, or another monitoring service, can determine the general level of brand-specific online chatter.
• Viral pass-along: Using pixel tracking on distributed media, or by using internally hosted content, determines how many impressions beyond bought impressions can be attributed to consumers passing marketing to others.
• Leads generated: Number of leads attributable to ads.
• Interaction rates: Rate of interactions with interactive ads to all ads served. May want to determine unique interaction rate by dividing by unique individuals reached instead of all ads served.
• Increase in product review page traffic: a simple tracking tag or bought button on an external product review page can show increases; alternatively, just ask review site for data.
• Increase in opt-in/subscription rates: Number of opt-ins attributable to ads.
• Increase in positive blog mentions (buzz): Buzz monitoring service can determine the general level of brand-specific online chatter, and filter out negative comments.o Strong website event: For brick and mortar store, events like printing directions to a local store would count. Will differ depending on website.
• Contact requested: Number of contact requests attributable to ad.
• eCoupon printed: Number of ecoupons printed; if possible, number redeemed.
• Purchase/Conversion: Number of purchases or conversions attributable to ad.
• Quality/Amount: Qualitative metrics such as dollar amount purchased help determine where most valuable audience is coming from.
• Recommendation: Similar to viral pass-along, but limited to existing customers.

There are many other metrics that can be applied when measuring social media.  The above are just a start.  The important thing to take away is that the new car smell does wear off and you want to make sure that your social media campaign produces results.