If you’re not tracking the success of your social media marketing efforts, you’re missing out on valuable insights that could help you improve.

While many businesses are tracking likes, retweets, and shares, there’s so much more to social media success than those raw numbers.

In this post, we’re going to dig into the many ways to track social media success beyond the obvious, and how to use this data to optimize your social efforts.

1. Set clear goals

To determine the success of your social media efforts, you’ll need to know what you’re trying to achieve. Are you trying to grow your brand awareness, drive more traffic to your website, or increase sales?

The specific goals you set will determine which metrics you focus on when measuring your success. For example, if you’re trying to drive more website traffic, you’ll want to focus on your click-through rate. If you’re trying to increase sales, you’ll want to focus on your conversion rate. If you’re publishing audio content, such as podcasts, you may also want to track engagement from podcast transcriptions as they can enhance SEO and drive more discoverability.

2. Get to know your audience

Another key factor in your social media strategy is knowing who your audience is. This will help you create content that will resonate with them.

You can use your social media analytics to learn more about your audience. For example, you can see what types of content they engage with the most, what times of day they are most active on social media, and what other interests they have.

The more you know about your audience, the better you can target your content and your ads. This can help you increase your engagement and your ROI.

3. Get a handle on your social media presence

Before you can start analyzing your social media ROI, you need to know where you stand. That means auditing your social media presence.

This will give you a good idea of what you’re doing well and where you can improve. It will also help you identify any red flags that could be holding you back.

4. Make sure your social media profiles are complete and up to date

If your profiles are incomplete, it can give off the impression that you’re not active on social media. It can also make it harder for potential followers and customers to understand who you are and what you do.

Here’s a list of things to check for on each of your social media profiles:

• Profile photo: Make sure your profile photo is high-quality and represents your brand. This is the first thing people see when they come across your profile, so you want to make a good first impression. A photo editor can help refine lighting, adjust framing, or add branded elements to ensure your visuals stand out.

• Cover photo: Your cover photo is a great place to showcase your products, services, or team. You can also use it to promote special offers and sales.

• Bio: Your bio is the first thing people read when they come across your profile. Make sure it’s clear, concise, and represents your brand. You can also use it to highlight your products, services, and team.

• Contact information: Make sure your contact information is up to date. This includes your website URL, phone number, email, and physical address.

• Business hours: If you have a physical location, make sure your business hours are up to date.

• Services and products: If your social media platform has a section for services and products, make sure it’s up to date.

5. Use social media management tools

There are a lot of different metrics to consider when calculating your social media ROI. And, if you’re not using a social media management tool to track and analyze your social media marketing, it can be a lot of work to pull all of that data together manually. Grab a HubSpot promo code to simplify tracking and cut costs.

Social media management tools, like Hootsuite, make it easy to track all of your social media metrics in one place. They’re especially valuable for businesses juggling multiple workflows, from campaign reporting to outsourced procurement, where centralization and efficiency are key.Plus, you can use the built-in analytics tools to create custom reports and track your progress over time – or even use AI to generate reports by simply importing data from spreadsheets..

6. Track your social media traffic

If you’re using social media to promote your website and drive traffic to your blog, you should be tracking your social media traffic.

To do this, you can use Google Analytics (or GA4). Simply go to the “Acquisition” tab and click on “Overview.” Then, click on “Social” to see how much traffic your social media channels are driving to your site.

If you want to get more specific, you can also track social media traffic by channel or by individual post.

7. Set up conversion tracking

When you’re running a social media campaign, it’s crucial to track how many leads and sales are coming from your social media pages.

If you don’t have a way to track conversions, you won’t be able to accurately measure your social media ROI.

One of the best ways to track conversions is by using UTM parameters on your social media links.

UTM parameters are tags that you can add to your links to track where your traffic is coming from. You can use them to track traffic from your social media profiles and campaigns. In addition to UTMs, implementing form tracking on landing pages allows you to monitor how users engage with signup forms, contact fields, or gated offers giving you deeper insights into lead quality and funnel performance.

By using UTM parameters, you can track how many visits, leads, and sales are coming from your social media profiles and campaigns.

8. Use UTM parameters

UTM (Urchin Traffic Monitor) parameters are a simple, yet effective way to track your social media traffic.

UTM parameters are tags that you can add to your social media URLs. When someone clicks on the URL, the tags are sent back to your Google Analytics account.

This allows you to see exactly where your traffic is coming from, and gives you a much more detailed view of your social media ROI.

You can create UTM parameters using Google’s free URL builder tool. Just enter your URL, and then fill in the required fields.

9. Track your followers

It’s very common for businesses to want to track their follower growth on social media. But, it’s not as common to track follower growth as a direct result of your social media marketing.

If you’re running ads, working with influencers, or running a special promotion, this is a great time to track follower growth.

For example, if you’re running an influencer campaign, you’ll want to track your follower growth during the campaign. This is a great way to measure your success and make sure you’re getting the most out of your campaign.

10. Use social listening tools

Social listening tools can help you keep track of all the conversations happening around your brand. They can also help you identify who your top followers are, which social media platforms are driving the most traffic to your website, and so much more.When combined with tools like phishing simulation testing, they can also help detect security threats, impersonation attempts, and other risks to your online reputation.

In addition to tracking your social media ROI, social listening tools can help you stay on top of your social media KPIs and help you identify new opportunities to engage with your audience.

11. Track your social media mentions

Social media mentions are any time your business is mentioned on social media, whether that’s in a post, a comment, or a message.

A social media mention can be positive, negative, or neutral. They can be a useful way to track your brand’s reputation and understand how people perceive your business.

By tracking your social media mentions, you can see how many times people are talking about your business and what they’re saying. This can be a good indicator of your social media ROI. If you’re dealing with brand impersonation, fraud concerns, or identity monitoring, tools like public records lookup services can help verify identities behind suspicious accounts or confirm the legitimacy of individuals engaging with your brand on social platforms.

12. Monitor your competitors

If you want to know how well your social media marketing is going, you should look at the competition. Analyzing your competitors on social media can give you an idea of what’s working and what’s not.

You can see how they’re using social media to promote their business, and you can compare their social media presence to yours.

This can help you identify areas where you need to improve, and it can also help you identify opportunities to get ahead of the competition.

Conclusion

Social media ROI is an important metric to track, and it’s important to have the right resources in place to grow your social media accounts. If you want to learn more, check out our Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing.