Social media continues to be the marketing channel most talked about in the media. This causes many small businesses to think they must be missing something because “social media doesn’t seem to impact my business all that much.” That may be true but getting the facts on your social media will put your mind at ease and help you determine the priority of social media in your marketing program.

What Social Media Should You Be Monitoring?

1. Visits from each social network and the total from all social networks - This will give you insight into how much of your traffic is coming from social media properties. Having the percentage compared to SEO or Paid Search will give you some great perspective. If you are spending a higher percentage of your marketing resources (time or money) on Social Media but you aren’t getting a proportional amount of traffic from these efforts, maybe you should reconsider your plan.
2. Value Per Visitor - How much is each visitor from social media networks worth to you? To calculate this, just divide the total sales or conversions from social media by the total visits. This allows you to easily understand how much a social media visitor is worth compared to other marketing sources.
3. Cost Per Acquisition - How much are you spending to get a sale or conversion? To calculate this, divide the amount of money you are spending on Social Media by the number of transactions or conversions you received. Having this metric will help you compare the profitability of your social media to other marketing channels.

In the social media world, there are a million other metrics to look at. However, all of them will boil down to the three most important metrics above.

Do you have a social media dashboard that makes it easy to monitor the three metrics above? If not, you should check out BringShare. The BringShare Social Media dashboard gives you all three of these stats along with some other important metrics and compares them to all your other sources of website traffic. Check out this video for a quick overview of how to get this data with the BringShare Social Media Dashboard.

BringShare is digital marketing software that pulls all of your digital marketing data into one convenient place, saving you time and money. Sign up to get started with your SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media, Paid Search and Website Performance Dashboards. We make it easy to track all of your digital marketing in one place. Still need a BringShare Membership? Well you’re in luck. We offer a free thirty day BringShare Trial Membership.