The success of social media campaigns is notoriously hard to quantify. With pure organic SEO, there are quantifiable metrics upon which to judge the success of one’s tactics. Keyword rankings go up or down. Traffic goes up or down. There are numbers and graphs and statistics which prove the efficacy of any given technique.

Social Media campaigns are not as easy to judge in those terms. The effects are more qualitative than quantitative, and the return on investment is almost never as clear as with traditional SEO services. This does not in any way imply that the social media campaign is less valuable, only harder to track. A great post on Mashable about how to judge the effectiveness and ROI of social media for businesses explains the importance of deciding what the desired outcome of the campaign is.

Social Media Misunderstood

This is where the biggest disconnect between clients and internet marketing professionals usually happens. The client expects quantitative data to back up the effectiveness of a social media campaign when the overall effects are not easily quantified. Instead of looking at typical metrics like traffic increase, other benchmarks must be set at the beginning of the campaign.

For instance, if the campaign is meant to help fix a bad online reputation, then an increased number of conversations is a good benchmark upon which to gauge success. Increased traffic to the website was not the intention, but is often used as a metric for success.

The Intent of a Social Media Campaign Should Match The Results

Figuring out what your goals are specifically is the first step to figuring out the value of your Social Media Campaign, and how it is helping your business (or not!)