How Can You Track Success in Using Social Media?

Well....the plain, unvarnished truth is this: You can't. Lots of very smart people on working on ways to track and measure social media marketing success, but to date there ain't no such animal.  All you can do if you're going to be active in social media marketing, which you definitely should be, is to try and evaluate your goals in using social media and whether or not you are achieving those goals, or at least making progress. 

Here are some things to take into consideration when attempting to determine the success of your efforts in social media marketing and which approach you should take:

• Remember what social media really is! It isn't just about you trying to sell your stuff or promote your business. Social means just that---so socialize and don't ram your products down the throats of all and sundry. Otherwise, your results will be much different than what you hoped for! It's okay to promote your business some, naturally. But don't overdo it and do make a point of giving other members something of value such as information or even entertainment. If you don't think you can do this, then social media will not be successful for you.

• Whatever you do in social media, try to assess a value. In other words, try to take stock of whether or not a particular tweet or comment produced the desired results for you. Obviously, you want keep doing the things that get the best results. If a certain photo or comment netted new followers or fans, then try to ascertain what it was about that particular thing that people liked, so that you can duplicate it.

• Remember that having tons of followers or fans is not necessarily your ultimate goal in using social media marketing. In fact, quality is preferred over quantity. If you have 20,000 fans or followers and 75% of those people are spam accounts or auto followers, then what have you really got?

In using social media marketing, since it's basically impossible to track analytics of success, you should have a very clear goal for what you hope to accomplish by using this marketing technique. Then, simply do what needs to be done to try and achieve that goal!