Are Your Social Media Efforts Working?

Many for-profit and nonprofit organizations are blindly engaged in social media – unaware of whether their activities are actually helping meet their goals. There is no standard way to measure social media performance. However, not tracking your efforts can lead to wasted time and resources. So how do you determine if your organization is using its time and resources wisely?

 

First, define your objectives. What are your organization’s overall goals (non-financial and financial)? Your objectives should be specific. For example, does your organization want to generate campaign awareness? Raise money for your cause? Recruit volunteers? Sell tickets to an event? Your social media efforts must have purpose.

 

Once you’ve defined your objectives, identify what data you can use to measure your performance. Performance data should be actionable, relevant, and practical. How you define success may change along the way depending on your results. Here are some common ways to tell if your social media efforts are working.

Whatever data you decide to track, make sure you start small. Also, don’t waste time analyzing data that doesn’t measure your social media performance as it relates to your overall objectives. For example, if your goal is to sell tickets to your annual gala, the number of Twitter followers you’ve gained in the past week is irrelevant if none of these followers purchased a ticket.

 

As we all know, social media isn’t free – it requires time and resources to do well. If you’re like many nonprofits, you have limited resources and time to devote to social networking. That’s why it’s important to make sure that your efforts are working. If you’re not seeing results, don’t keep doing the same thing. Revise your strategy. Keep in mind that you may not see results right away.

 

How do you measure your organization’s social media efforts? Please share your methods below.