Evaluating how well your social media efforts are working is easier than you think with the right tools to measure ROI. These tools can sharpen your strategy. In this article, we’ll cover these tools to help you meet your goals, looking at specific ones and understanding social media ROI better.

Explore Engagement, Conversion, and Revenue

These three factors stand tall. They guide us through the fog of social metrics to the clear light of actionable insights.

Engagement: Social media runs on likes, comments, shares, and how people interact with what you post. It’s about making people talk about your brand and building a group of followers around it. Here, we begin to see the payoff for all our hard work with engagement. But this is only the beginning.

Conversion: It’s great to be engaged, but the important thing is does it make people act? Conversion is about how our interactions with others turn into actual outcomes. It is like making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading a guide. It’s important to change those digital approvals into actions in your selling process.

Revenue: The ultimate goal. Every road should lead to Rome, and for us, Rome is revenue. This links our social media efforts to our business goals. Can the ‘likes’ be turned into profits? Checking the money earned from social media tells us if our time is well-spent or wasted.

Calculate Your Social Media ROI

After setting the stage with Engagement, Conversion, and Revenue, the next step is to figure out our social media ROI by putting these pieces together. Here’s how to calculate your social media ROI step-by-step:

Step 1: Gather Your Data

Engagement metrics, conversion rates, and revenue figures are invaluable data. They offer insights into what’s resonating with your audience, what’s working, and what’s not.

Step 2: Decide What Online Actions Are Worth

Not every like or download will lead to a sale, but it’s important to know how much these actions are worth in terms of money. This involves estimating how valuable a potential customer is or calculating the average spending of customers coming from social media. By doing this, you can identify which online activities truly boost our profits.

Step 3: Calculate Costs

Now, consider your investment. How much are you spending on social media marketing? Include everything from advertising spend to the software tools that help you measure your success, and services that boost your profile with more likes and followers. In my case, I use the Instagram SMM panel JustAnotherPanel to grow my online presence. This will give you the total cost of your social media efforts.

Step 4: Do the Math

Here’s where we bring it all together. Subtract the total cost from the revenue generated through social media. Then, divide that number by the total cost again. Multiply by 100, and voilà, you have your Social Media ROI percentage.

ROI = ((Revenue from Social Media – Cost of Social Media) / Cost of Social Media) x 100

Online Tools for Measuring ROI

Here are the best tools to measure your ROI:

1. Hootsuite Impact

Hootsuite Impact helps you see how your social media efforts are helping your business. It finds out the ROI by keeping track of sales and other actions coming from your social media posts and ads. With its detailed reports, you can figure out which social media sites and what kind of posts are best for your business. This helps you decide where to spend your time and money better.

2. Sprout Social

Sprout Social gives you tools to see how well your social media is doing by looking at engagement, reach, and results. It shows detailed ROI reports and lets you learn about your audience to improve your content and strategies.

3. Google Analytics

This is not just for social media ROI, but Google Analytics is a crucial tool to understand your social media’s impact. It tracks visitors from social media to your website and their actions, like making a purchase. By creating goals and watching how these visitors move from social media to your site, Google Analytics helps you see if your social media efforts are leading to real business success. This way, you can better judge how effective your social media campaigns are.

4. Buffer Analyze

Buffer Analyze is an easy-to-use tool that helps you keep track of how well your social media is doing. It shows you how your posts are doing on different sites, including how many people are interacting with them, how far they’re reaching, and if you’re getting more followers. Its simple dashboards let you quickly see which posts your followers like best. This helps you make your social media even better. Plus, it has handy features for scheduling posts ahead of time, which saves you time and keeps your social media active and interesting.

5. Keyhole

Keyhole helps you watch how your hashtags and keywords are doing on social media. It shows you how many times your hashtag is used, how many people see your posts, and how they interact with them. This helps you know if your social media campaigns are working well and what you can do to improve them.

6. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is good for seeing what kind of content is popular on social media. It tells you what topics trending and how much people are sharing and liking your posts. This helps you make content that more people will like.

7. Brand24

Brand24 makes it easy to find out what people are saying about your brand on the internet. It helps you monitor your reputation by showing you real-time mentions from social media, blogs, and websites. This way, you can quickly understand public opinion, respond to comments or complaints promptly, and manage your brand’s image more effectively, ensuring you always stay engaged with your audience.

8. Mention

Mention keeps track of where and how your brand, your competitors, and your industry are talked about online and on social media. It gives you information to help you make smart choices for your marketing and better connect with people who like your brand.

FAQs

How often should I check my social media ROI?

It’s good to look at your social media ROI often so you can change your plan as needed. Checking once a month is a good idea, but you might want to check more if you’re running a big campaign.

Can I look at the ROI of my free social media activities separately from my paid ads?

Yes, you can and should look at free and paid social media activities separately to see how well each is doing. Many tools let you see these two types of activities on their own.

How do I know if in-store sales come from my social media?

You can connect your customer management system with your social media data and use special promo codes or links for social media. This way, you can see how your online work affects your in-store sales.

Has seeing social media ROI ever made you change your plan a lot?

Yes, once when we checked our ROI, we found out that our videos on social media were doing much better than other content in getting interest and sales. So, we decided to make more videos, which really helped increase our ROI.