How can I measure and demonstrate the success of my social media campaigns?

There are many proven social media monitoring techniques, from simple mention tracking tornsophisticated sentiment analysis, to measure the success of your social media marketing efforts. These techniques can be combined with your existing digital campaign analytics to provide insight into how your social media efforts are influencing and augmenting your overall marketing activity.rnTypical objectives could include: Financial ROI: This is the one your senior team will want to see. As social media marketing tends not to berna lead-generating activity, financial ROI can be hard to measure. It’s not impossible, however.rnOlivier Blanchard, author of Social Media ROI, has developed a methodology 6rnfor measuring the impact of your social marketing initiatives on your bottom line, which is wellrnworth exploring. Increasingly, companies are investigating ways of incorporating SM metricsrndata into marketing automation solutions such as Eloqua, Marketo or Coremetrics and we seernthis becoming an ever more prominent topic throughout 2011. Brand awareness While monitoring social media mentions alone will not give an idea of sentiment, it can indicaternhow aware your market is of your brand in relation to the competition. Results can be correlatedrnagainst recent brand awareness campaigns to determine their effectiveness. Product/Brand perception: By combining social media mention monitoring with sentiment analysis, you can analyse thernmarket response to your product news or corporate announcements in real time as well asrnafter the fact. Trend ReversalrnSocial media activity can have a positive impact on a downward trend. You will need to clearlyrndefine the trend in question, the metrics you will use to establish the point at which it has beenrnreversed, and the tools and timescales you will use to measure progress. Demand Generation Tracking social media-generated traffic to your destination sites (e.g. a thought leadership blogrnpost or campaign microsite) or content (e.g. white paper, video or webcast) will show the extent tornwhich your social media activity is creating interest and demand. Lead Generation Leads directly generated through your social media activities can be tracked by variousrnmethods, including voucher codes, clickthrough analysis or even asking prospects where theyrnheard about your brand/product/offer.