How To Embrace Web 2.0 - Part 6 - Monitor Your Social Networking Success

Evaluating social media marketing is different than just counting Web site usage or circulation numbers. You want to measure how well you are doing at engaging the public. To do this successfully you should measure both the amount and the intensity of the engagement.

Here are some examples of what you need to monitor:
 

1/ How many blog readers do you have?
2/ How many comments are posted by how many different visitors?
3/ How many people mention your site on their blogs, and how often?
4/ Are search engine results predominantly positive or negative?
5/ Is your content bookmarked in social bookmarking sites?
6/ How many friends and contacts do you have on your profile in social networking sites?
7/ How many comments or scrapbook entries are you receiving?
8/ How many visitors contribute content to your site (videos, photos, documents, wiki entries)?

Be prepared, as this can be time-consuming. However the results can be so effective at finding your target market, that the bottom-line of your business can be dramatically lifted, so the time will be well spent.

Here are some ideas on how to monitor your results:

Analytics: set up any analytics program in your site to measure: unique visitors, page views, time spent on site, depth of visit and conversions.

Contribution: if the page where people land has got social elements (people can contribute into it, for example comments) monitor the number of comments you receive, you will then be able to see the unique visitors/comments conversion.

Feed Subscribers: check how many you had before and how many you have after finishing any campaign.

Other Social Networks: check if your content gets to be successful in other social networks.

People talking about you: use Monitor This to check who talks about you and who is helping you spread the word.

Social Network Monitoring Software: There is software that can handle your Social Networking Statistics (and help extend your network in the progress) such as http://8hands.com and http://www.analytictech.com/ucinet/ucinet.htm