24
2010
8 Social Media Metrics you should care about
An article by 
1. Conversion Rates
The best way to figure out when someone clicks on a social media link and then converts (to a paying customer, for instance) is to place a cookie on the user’s machine that identifies the campaign, once a user clicks on the social media link.
2. The Control Group
To measure the success of your social media campaigns, compare your leads and conversion rates with a control group that has not been exposed to your social media campaigns. Not all businesses have such clear distinctions in their customers, but if you do then use it to your advantage.
3. Growth Rate
As your leads generated by your social media campaigns grow, it is good to measure the actual rate of growth, month to month. This metric will also help you set reasonable expectations. and will allow you to monitor fluxes when you introduce new tools.
4. Marketing Campaign History
Make sure you are tracking all the cookies that result in a lead or a sale, not just the first cookie or the converting cookie. This will allow you to measure the effectiveness of the different stages of your marketing campaign.
5. Acquisition Costs
If you are not measuring this, you are throwing money away. And it’s an easy metric to measure. Calculate your entire expenditure on the social media campaign, and divide by how many acquisitions or leads you get.
6. Retention Rates
Compare how more likely a new customer who interacts with you via social media is likely to remain a customer, with how likely a new customer who does not interact with you via social media remains a customer.
Use your control group to measure this.
7. Customer Saves
Measure how often interaction with your customers via online prevents them from cancelling a service, or (for instance) abandoning a shopping cart.
8. Cross-Sells
Are social media customers more or less likely to buy additional services? Try to attach actual revenue numbers to this metric.
This article is based heavily on a blog post that appeared in the Social Media Examiner , written by Nichole Kelly.
