There\u2019s a huge elephant in the room for marketing and PR pros: many stop short at measuring KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) of their social marketing efforts, such as number of followers \/ fans or engagement with their communities.<\/p>\n
This is a fine *start* to measuring the success of your social media marketing programs.<\/p>\n
The problem with it is indicators are just that: an\u00a0indication<\/em>\u00a0of success. Alone they\u2019re not real results (outcomes!). And yet this is all\u00a0most people report. Agencies, VPs and CMOs should demand more and that their teams define and track conversion metrics and economic value in addition to KPIs. And yes,\u00a0everyone can get to conversion: if you say you can\u2019t you\u2019re not trying hard enough.<\/p>\n Today our team that works on Google Analytics is helping get you closer to social measurement zen by releasing a new set of reports designed to track conversions \/ revenue generated from social plus a holistic set of KPIs that matter.<\/p>\n The best part, in my opinion, is the fact that we\u2019re going to help show not just last click attribution, but also how social attributed to a purchase that occurred at a later date. As social may be influencing buyers who return later via an ad, email campaign, search or other method.<\/p>\n This will help agencies better show the value of their programs and elevate their worth as well as brands make a case to increase social spends. Or, decrease spends if they don\u2019t find social as effective as other channels \u2013 not every tactic makes sense for every business. As always, the answer is: it depends. And data will help you decide.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been arguing at the Future Buzz that your owned presence (like your website or blog) should be where you\u00a0focus activities\u00a0for years. External social communities\u00a0aren\u2019t where conversions happen\u00a0anyway. It should be pretty obvious, but we have to say it (again) because some people are still confused or looking in all the wrong places. And our new reports help you bridge social with web to provide your\u00a0platform agnostic model\u00a0with far more insight.<\/p>\n With that said, head over to the Google Analytics blog and\u00a0read our post for full details.<\/p>\n Disclosure: Adam works for the Google Analytics team as product marketing manager, however the opinions in the post are his own.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a huge elephant in the room for marketing and PR pros: many stop short at measuring KPIs (Key Performance … <\/p>\n