Social media is a new and exciting world, especially if you’re a business just beginning to explore the space. Because it’s still a relatively new space, no one has definitive answers on what kinds of goals, tactics and measurements work best. However, there are a lot of people who have some great ideas.

Some of these people just happen to be part of a Twitter chat and community that I co-host known as #SMmeasure. #SMmeasure is a weekly Twitter chat that happens at 9am(PST)/noon(EST) every Thursday where myself and some very smart Twitter users get together to discuss and share our ideas on social media and social media measurement as it relates to a variety of different subjects.

The hashtag has also turned into one to follow all through the week as our community regularly uses it to share new and interesting articles they find that relate to social media metrics and measurement. After co-hosting this chat for over a year, I’m happy to say that there’s more than a few things I’ve learned from this community.

 I can start with a list of 20 important things that I’ve learned from hosting the chat and interacting with the community that can be of use to almost any organization who is already in or even just thinking of entering the social media space.

I’ve broken the list up into two “top ten” list installments for easier reading and to leave a little digestion time in-between. The first 10 of 20 tips learned from the #SMmeasure community are:

Start with the Basics of Social Media Measurement

1. As part of your social media strategy, tie your social media goals with your company’s mission. Once you and executives understand the social media goals, define your measurable objectives in social media that coincide with those goals.
2. Stay focused. You have set your social media goals and objectives and have gotten executive buy in and approval. Now is the time to keep your measurement objectives aligned to the strategy. Don’t measure any metrics that are not part of your social media goals and objectives.
3. When creating your social media objectives, make it S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time based). Examples of SMART social media objectives:
a. Increase our Facebook Fan Page community by 20% to 2,500 fans by end of the year

b. Increase referral traffic from social media sites to target website by 10% in Q4 c. Select channels where you’re customers and prospects engage.

Select channels where you’re customers and prospects engage.

 4.Just because everyone else has a Facebook page, doesn’t mean you should create one. Do your homework and participate in channels worthwhile to your organization and its prospects.

Select Tools to Measure Social Media Success

5. [Free] Track your links using Google’s URL Builder to track your social media links in Google Analytics or use an URL shortener like bit.ly to track analytics

6. [Paid] Use a social media monitoring service like Sysomos to monitor conversations across social networks, blogs, news sites, and forums and access metrics to track campaigns. You know the old saying, you get what you pay for and there are no free equivalents to what you get when paying for a dedicated social media monitoring and analytics platform.

Measure Online and Offline Efforts

7. In today’s world of multichannel marketing, mix your offline and online promotions and tie measurements of success to your analytics tools. Use trackable URLs, campaign specific landing pages, QR codes and social network icons on print material.

Choose What Social Media Metrics to Measure

8. Traffic – take note of the referral traffic you get from social media sites to your target website. Use Google Analytics to separate your social media traffic from your other referral sources. You can then do more advanced analytics by tying in time on site and bounce rate metrics to show that social media traffic produces more quality and more engaged users than your organic search traffic.

9. Interaction – count the number of mentions (of your brand and competitors) and number of blog post comments, comments left on news sites, forums, and Q&A sites like LinkedIn and Quora.

10. Leads and sales – converge your marketing campaigns with your social media campaigns by using unique tracking codes to merge with your CRM database and analytics. Keep track of the leads that you bring in through social media sites (a good one to use is the lead source field in CRM databases), but follow through to the end to make sure revenue is being tied to the leads that you bring in.

Number eleven to twenty will follow shortly – they are not to be missed. In the interim you can find additional insights into social media on thesysomos blog or by joining the #smmeasure chat, every Thursday at noon EST.

This post has been contributed by Sheldon Levine, community manager for Sysomos. You can see Jeff Cann of Sysomos speak at the Social Media World Forum, N. America event.  For more information please click here.”

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