2 Elements Critical to Measuring your Online Marketing Efforts

Behavior & Reach - The minimalist’s approach to measuring online marketing effectiveness.  

There are two important elements to measuring your online marketing efforts; your website’s (or blog’s) traffic and the engagement level of your efforts. 

ONE: Tracking your Website’s or Blog’s Marketing Behavior

1) Take a snap shot of your current website statistics.

2) Review them monthly, or weekly if you are able.  

To start, you need to see if you currently have a website analytics tool on your website and blog. If not, add one immediately!  The effective and free tool I always recommend is www.Google.com/Analytics.  Google Analytics is simple to use.  NOTE: Ensure you identify yourself with an email which will always be your company’s, obviously, ensuring your company always has access to their Analytics.  Create an account for each of your websites or blogs.   Google Analytics will immediately generate a unique Google Analytics ID & Code for each of the accounts (or websites) you have identified.  In my workshops, I see various websites and tools, like Wordpress, Wix, Blogger, and various Website Content Management Tools.  Generally, the place to enter your Google Analytic's code is under your Search Engine Optimization account settings area.  Or, just give both your ID and Code to your website’s content manager; they will add it appropriately.  Within 48 hours, after the code has been added, Google starts collecting your statistics.  I’d wait a week after your codes been added, and then go back to your Google Analytics Accounts and look at your Google Analytics Reports.

 For each of your Blog and Website the most important statistics which will help you manage your online marketing efforts are.

• Number of Total & Unique visitors,
• How many times visitors have viewed each of your pages
• Time On Site (aim is to increase this number.) & Bounce Rate (aim is to decrease this number.)
• Traffic Sources (Direct, Google, Google Ads, Facebook, Facebook Ads, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.)
• Keywords used to find your website

TWO: Tracking the Influence and Reach of your Social Media Efforts

Measuring the effectiveness of your Social Media Efforts:  If you can remember that your Facebook Page needs to read like a “Grade Two Reader”, i.e. grade two level of text, short sentences, and animated with visuals, like a Pop-Up Book, you’ll have the type of posts people like to share and comment on.  (Assuming also, your content is valuable to them.)  Now, to measure your REACH, the simplest free tool to use is www.Klout.com.  I use both Klout and www.SproutSocial.com.  I have upgraded the Sprout Social Tools so I can get more information on my followers and link my Google Analytics to my Social platforms.  But, the free version of either Klout or SproutSocial will generate valuable graphs which shows you your reach, and gives you a score.  

Your intent is to increase and sustain a high score or “influence”.  

Each tool provides analysis and tools to help you more clearly understand your company’s social media impact, your network's influence and the topic you are most effectively posting. Using either tool, you can improve your usage of social media and reach your network.  

Choose one or both, create your account, and sign in weekly to see the impact of your efforts. Strive to continuously improve your scores.

Creating your Social Media Policy in 7 Steps.

Why do you need a social media policy?

It can be empowering and an excellent competitive weapon! A Social Media policy should be an extension of your current employee code of conduct, and marketing guidelines.  Thinking of it in these terms, simplifies it for everyone involved.  Whenever a new tool or technology is introduced it creates new opportunities and as well as new possible issues.  As a large number of your employees are using Social Media, a policy helps them understand their role.  

When used properly, a social media policy can turn your employees into your largest source of new FANs and Followers.   Having your employees properly share, retweet or mention your social media efforts is powerful!
Once created, have it signed off by your human resources or legal. Next incorporated it into your employees welcome packages, so it's signed by each new employee.  For existing employees, have it shared and signed off by each.

Here are the seven steps often followed to create the meat of your social media policy.   

1. Identify your company's Social Media objectives.  Goals, vision, and purpose.
2. Indicate which Social Media platforms your are officially going to use.  
3. Coordinators - Identify who your official social media administrations are for your company.  If an employee has content for the company's official social media channels, let them know how to share their content with the Social Media Administrator for official distribution.  
4. Code of Conduct - Often work ethic, respect and professionalism. The Code of Conduct for Social Media would be the same as the traditional employee Code of Conduct.
5. Encourage employees to become FANs and follow from their personal accounts. Encourage employees to share, mention and retweet as appropriated, keeping in mind the Code of Conduct principles.
6. Confidentiality and Copyright is the same on Social Media as any other communications vehicle.
7. Monitoring - the company will likely "listen" online for their company name, if they see an employee's activity violates the company's Code of Conduct, the company would take similar steps  as if an employee violated any traditional code of conduct behavior.   

Here is an example of a  http://www.okura.com/socialmediapolicy.html  social media policy from Okura Hotel & Resorts.