How to measure social media strategy and success

Measuring your success with social media is key. It's one of the reasons I have a job. I really understand the importance of measuring what works and doesn't work, looking at our click-through rates from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and how much traffic this drives to our website.

Along with Google Analytics, I utilize the statistical feature in Hootsuite. I think Hootsuite is a must for any social media manager or anyone who is consistently managing a social media campaign on different platforms.

Once you are logged into Hootsuite, to view your statistics, look at the lower-left-hand corner of your screen and click the "Launch" button. From there you can check your stats summary or individual messages by clicking "Summary."

You can choose to view stats from the past 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days or custom view. I like this stat a lot because I can see my high traffic days. If you scroll your mouse over each day you will see exactly how many clicks you had that day. You can also print or download the stats into a .CSV file.

You can also see two graphs showing where your traffic is coming from, geographically and from which sites. Below this drop-down menu is an option to view popular tweets. It will show you the top 10 tweets and the amount of traffic you received. This is extremely helpful to see what types of tweets are successful and what are not.

Here is a great article I came across last week: "The 13 Truths About Social Media Management" -- great tips and advice!

Of course, measuring the data is only part of managing the process. Now that you have this info, what do you do with it? I use this data two ways:

1. I look at the times of day and days of the week that are "peak times" and adjust my posting around that.

2. I look at my top messages and look at the title and subject. Sometimes the title is more important than the actual content of the article you are posting.

What do you use to measure your return on investment or progress with social media? Please leave a comment below!

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Katie Lance is the marketing manager for Inman News. Future of Real Estate Marketing is a part of Inman News.

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