I gave an interview last week with a Burnaby publication, and one of the questions they asked was “how can you track/prove that your social media is producing results and converting into sales?”
Honestly, this is one of my least favorite questions. It feels like we are all still figuring out this crazy new world of social media, and proving ROI is still very murky territory. I can tell you for certain that Social Media will help to increase your brand exposure, and, if done right, will help create excellent customer service. By installing certain buttons on your website, you can make it easier for your “fans” to become ambassadors for you. It also certainly can lead to engagement with your current and potential clients.
But proving sales conversions can be tricky.
Today, I want to give you three options for tracking your Twitter stats and following.
HootSuite: www.hootsuite.com
HootSuite is an excellent alternative to using the Twitter.com interface. Which, to be fair, kinda stinks. In addition to offering things like the ability to stream the people you follow into categories, a custom link shortener, and the ability to schedule your tweets, HootSuite also will track things like how many tweets you sent, and which of those tweets were retweeted, and by whom. For more information, click here.
Bit.ly: http://bitly.com/pro/
Rather than be an alternative to the Twitter.com interface, bit.ly is a link-shortener, an imperative tool on Twitter. It allows you to create a custom URL for your short links (e.g.: artofthebiz.com/shortlink), but it also tracks those links for you: who retweets them, etc.
Crowdbooster: www.crowdbooster.com
This is a brand-new analytics service, still in beta. Like HootSuite, it allows you to track both your Twitter account and your Facebook Page. I’ve literally been on it for about three days, so I don’t have much to say about it, yet, but I like it a lot. It seems to provide analytics and stats that are more in-depth than a lot of the other services out there. I also like that you don’t have to use their interface to tweet from (but you can if you want to). It will track and analyze your tweets no matter how you publish your tweets. It also integrates with your bit.ly account. (h/t: @thornybleeder, @vixencoffee)
What’s your favorite way of tracking your Twitter ROI?