Congratulations! You have created a social media strategy with the steps you’ll take and the goals you want to achieve. Or maybe you’re just getting started and need some guidance on how to go about setting yourself up for success.

After you have implemented your strategy, it is very important to measure the actual impact you are having. Here are just a few of the many ways you can determine if your strategy is having a positive impact on your marketplace.

1. Vanity Metrics: While this should not be the highlight of your results, vanity metrics can help you quickly and easily see whether your activity is working. When you gain fans and followers, see more “Likes,” “favorites,” “shares,” and “retweets,” you can tell that what you’re publishing is attracting interest.
2. Sales: Get with your sales team and start tracking the social media conversions. Start asking how the person found out about your company. If you learn that new customers are reaching out based on your social media activity, you’ll have evidence that your strategy is working, and your sales staff will appreciate it.
3. Website Traffic: Measuring your website activity is key in determining how social media plays a role in your website traffic. We use Hubspot and Google Analytics, which can get you all the info you need to see where your traffic is coming from, but there are a lot of other good tools out there as well.

The bottom line is, you need to prove the return on investment (ROI) of your social media strategy in order to make it worthwhile. Your vendors will want to see whether social media is money well-spent. Using vanity metrics are a great start, but using deeper metrics and analytics will really showcase your success. I have given you everything you need to make social media flourish for your marketplace, but feel free to reach out anytime with any thoughts or questions.