Calculate Your Reach

You need to determine how many people you could potentially connect with on social media. In effect, this equates to the number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers you have. However, this is not the end of the story. Your content reach is limited only to the amount of friends and followers that people who engage with your brand have. For example, if you have 500 followers on Facebook and Twitter and they have a combined total of 10,000 followers, then your content reach is 10,500.

Time & Trust

Every single comment, photo, video or post takes a few seconds for a user to digest. It is estimated that the average “like” on Facebook takes seven seconds per person while close friends of this person will take an average of five seconds to digest that “like.” Now, you need to look at how many close friends shared the brand experience. On Facebook, analyze the comment to like a ratio of posts while on Twitter; the retweet to tweet ratio is all-important. The higher these ratios, the better.

Sentiment

This is a measure of how your business is perceived on social networks. It can be extremely difficult to measure sentiment although you do need to compare the number of positive and negative mentions. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend hours painstakingly going through tweets to find out what is being said. It is possible to get natural language processing tools from a variety of sites online that will quickly and effectively help you discover whether mentions of your company are positive or negative.

Metrics

If you really wish to calculate the ROI on social media, it is imperative that your company has clearly defined goals because ROI is impossible to calculate without a baseline of some sort. When it comes to calculating your ROI, it’s essential to note that you need to focus on what the numbers lead to rather than concentrating solely on the actual numbers. For example, does an increase in website visits actually lead to a higher income? Do people who find your site through social media click on your website’s product pages? You can find all the data you need through the use of Google Analytics, HootSuite, Omniture and other sites of this nature.

Using The Data

This is where it gets tough and is also where certain experts suggest that social media ROI can’t be accurately measured. And they have a point because coming up with the dollars and cents of your campaign is virtually impossible to nail down because there is some guesswork involved. Nonetheless, you can give it a pretty good go.

For example, you can go back to your goals. If you are measuring ROI through sales, you will need to analyze the metrics from your monitoring tools to see if your level of sales has increased. If it has, you can then look at the number of referrers on your e-commerce site from Twitter or Facebook or the amount of coupons given away in a Facebook offer. It is also necessary to look at trends. For instance, did your website store experience a spike in traffic soon after you posted on Facebook? Is it the case where a high sentiment analysis on Twitter results in better sales?

Conclusion

In the end, it is important to realize that measuring social media ROI is far more complex than the usual cost versus increase in sales equation we are used to measuring. While you can find out if social media is positively impacting your business, it isn’t possible at this point to know its full effect.

Ultimately, there are far too many variables to limit social media to a single fixed point. Additionally, social ROI is inevitably delayed ROI because it takes time for a post to resonate with the customers to the point where they go from visitors to paid customers. You can’t pinpoint when a certain customer decided to make this switch either. What you can do is stop being so focused on social ROI and concentrate instead on finding out what you have learned from your customers.

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They are used to promote events or sales and are a quick and easy method of spreading the word throughout the Twittersphere. The hashtag (denoted by #) is joined with a word or phrase and allows Twitter users to quickly search for things that interest them but the humble hashtag is also an excellent marketing tool. Below are 5 ways that your business can use Twitter hashtags for maximum effect.

Follow Small Business Hashtags

If you have no idea what a hashtag even is, follow a few on your Twitter account in order to find out what they actually do. You can search for hashtags on Twitter. If you are a small business looking to branch out, it makes sense to follow hashtags related to your industry. As such, you should look at #SMB, #Sales, #Networking, #Entrepreneur and #Small Business among others.

What will you find there? Hints, tips, advice and industry news that is fresh, up to date and usually accurate. One problem is that generic hashtags like these have an incredible amount of traffic so it can be a pain to trawl through countless irrelevant entries before you find gold. The good news is that scrolling can be extremely fast and you may find posts that inspire you to create blog entries. If you have the time and patience, following relevant hashtags could yield fantastic results.

Creating your own

If you run a small business, it is better to be a leader than a follower. Therefore, don’t just utilize the hashtags you find for information purposes, send out messages that are accompanied by popular hashtags so you can reach more readers. However, you shouldn’t stop there. Why not create your own hashtags?

When you tweet with your own hashtags, you have the chance to promote just about anything. Do you have a special offer, promotion or event that the world needs to know about? If so, you need to create and use your own hashtags. Bear in mind; however, that you can only use up to 140 characters and this will include the hashtag so keep it short. Never use spaces between the words because only the characters located before a space will get hyperlinked. Don’t use numerous hashtags unless they are relevant to your tweet. Abusing hashtags is a great way to lose followers.

Take part In business chats

Hashtags can be used to bring Twitter users together in order to take part in a discussion at a predetermined time. This may involve general discussion or specific questions that spark a debate. If you want to join a chat, simply log into Twitter at the agreed upon time and look out for tweets that carry the relevant hashtag. If you want to have your say, simply add the hashtag to your tweets. To be seen as an industry leader, perhaps you can begin scheduling your own chats.

Use Hashtags to promote your company

There is a fine line between cleverly promoting your company on Twitter and becoming a shameless self-publicist. Your followers will quickly grow tired of your company if your tweets contain nothing but company information. On the flipside, the whole reason you are on the site is to become better known. This requires a delicate balancing act.

As we have already mentioned, using hashtags sparingly with promotions is the ideal opportunity to use this device. Hold a contest online and attach a hashtag to it. Those who want to enter just need to send a tweet with a hashtag to be part of the fun.

Consistency is the key

The most important thing to remember when creating a hashtag is to be direct and to the point. As you know, Twitter is all about mastering the art of producing concise information. Never create a complex hashtag because it automatically cuts down on the length of your tweets and lengthy terms are not search engine friendly in any case. Few Twitter users will always look for a long hashtag so expect tweets carrying excessive hashtag baggage to be buried underneath a sea of brief tweets. In addition, too many hashtags simply make you sound desperate. Be smart, be simple and be consistent in order to be successful.

Conclusion

It is an exciting time to run a company but it is also a stressful one. If you don’t keep up with your rivals, their superior grasp of technology and online marketing will increase the gap between your companies faster than you can imagine. Master the art of Twitter hashtags and you can finally be a leader in your field.

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