How do you measure the return on investment from social media? Understanding the value of social media is important but really comes down to experimentation. I mean honestly, it’s hard to tell how much revenue a Tweet you sent out last week brought in, or if your last Instagram post boosted your bottom line. Many businesses are struggling to grasp the financial impact social media marketing is having for them.

You track your return from the quantitative data you receive from experimenting. That’s right, this will help your businesses determine what works best for their brands. We’ve broken down the process and listed a few simple steps to follow.

1.   Set Social Media Goals

Before you can get into measuring your return, you need to set goals! Your goals should be quantifiable and linked to a specific campaign. Why? This will allow you to track individual links that you share on Twitter, Facebook or other social media channels. Also, to ensure you get the most accurate number, you really want to set your goals based on actions that convert a casual browser to a lead, and ultimately a paying customer.

2. Track Your Goals

Once your goals are defined, the next step is to track them. Tracking is an extremely important part!

3.  Measure Your Social Media Expenses

In order to figure out whether you’re getting a positive or negative ROI for social media campaigns, you have to measure how much you’re spending. This includes; man hours, content, social media tools and ad costs. After all your time is valuable and expenses add up.

As you can see, tracking your social media ROI isn’t impossible. You just have to take a planned and strategic approach. Happy experimenting!

Everybody has big goals for the new year. You want growth, revenue, influence, more customers, bigger campaigns, better awards–setting the goals is the easy part. Achieving them? That’s a whole different ball game.

Conventional advice tells you to set SMART goals, goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, results-focused, time-bound. Instead of saying, I want to make more money in 2018, you say, I want to increase profit 10% in the first quarter.

Experts also advise breaking it down into small pieces so you don’t get overwhelmed. Break it into steps and pieces and achieve it one task at a time.

Conventional advice earned its place on the front pages of google: it works. Setting SMART goals and working toward them little by little is a great way to achieve a goal.

Unless you’re me because that just sounds so boring I just want to quit right now.

I don’t want SMART goals! I don’t want steps! I want excitement and spontaneity and the thrill of chasing an impossible goal–and getting lost in the process and discovering something even newer and more exciting along the way!

Or maybe you’re not like me at all, but you still struggle with goals. That’s okay! We can do this together.

Set Awesome Goals

Think you don’t need help with this part?

Wrong.

Your problem is you aren’t thinking big enough! Basketball players don’t train every day for years just so they can sometimes make a shot off the backboard.* They want that slow motion, jumping over the heads of their opponents, put it straight in the basket kind of slam dunk shot.

This is no time to get psyched out by fear. What do you really want with your business?

Running a business isn’t easy. What are you working so hard for? Be brash. Go big.

Only then should you be realistic–but only about achieving it. It’s going to take time and dedication, and probably the achievement of lots of smaller goals as you work your way to it. What are you going to do to achieve those goals? How will you overcome the naysayers? What will you say when your own self-doubt tries to talk you out of it?

Write down your questions, your doubts, all the reasons that pursuing this crazy goal is a stupid waste of time, that you’ll just fail anyway.

Then, one by one, come up with solutions.

See Them Through

Now that you have awesome (!) goals written down (because writing them down is the first step to achieving them), you need a plan for success.

We already talked about SMART goals. We talked about breaking them into mini goals. We have not yet talked about big wins and motivation.

Big wins are when, instead of saving money by cutting back on Starbucks lattes, you negotiate a big raise at work. Focus on big wins instead of little tactics and details. It gets you further, it feels great, and it’s great motivation.

Which is important because motivation won’t get you far. Gretchen Rubin is a researcher who studies happiness, good habits, and human nature. She writes that motivation doesn’t drive behavior:

Instead of thinking about motivation, I argue that we should think about aims, and then concrete, practical, realistic steps to take us closer to our aims.

Instead of thinking, “I want to lose weight so badly,” think instead about the concrete steps to take, “I’ll bring lunch from home.”

She has a quiz to help you figure out what sort of practical, realistic steps will be best for you–or, more specifically, your “tendency”. Each tendency (there are 4) is a different way of responding to expectations. For example, I’m an Obliger, so I respond to outside expectations. If you expect me to meet a goal, I’ll meet it pretty easily. Meeting my own goals, though, requires a system of outer accountability (ie a buddy to help keep me on track). Other tendencies respond to reason (the “why” of a goal) and desire.

You’re setting awesome goals. Set yourself up for success, too.

In today’s society, to truly establish yourself as a leader and wow your audience you need to create longer and more in depth content. This will truly help show your audience what you know that benefits them. There are 6 reasons why you want to write longer content that is deeper, offers more facts, and engages your audience in a better way. You can truly delve into a topic with more words than reading longer content or watching longer videos. The first step, start with longer features and higher quality. Secondly, dig deeper include more visuals. There are different types of content that lend themselves to digging deeper.

Feature Articles — A featured article requires more research and has a different format that’s shorter than blog posts have. Often a long article consists of quoting other authorities, books, individuals to further the points being made in the article. To demonstrate your authority, knowledge, and expertise you need to write long articles that will help be useful to you and your audience.

Case Studies — Typically a case study covers so much and the content is usually longer. You must define the problem, offer the solution and share the results via the case studies that you publish. This will certainly keep people reading. People like reading how a solution worked for other people, so case studies are a great choice for longer content.

White Papers —The intent of a white paper is to give authoritative information to guide the readers to answers about an issue that matters to them. A white paper is traditionally used in government and education circles. It will describe benefits, present a set of questions, tips or points about the topic, as well as recommendations and solutions.

Instructional Videos —Videos are known to grab the attention of the audience, and what better way to demonstrate your knowledge and build authority than a long, in depth video tutorial on an important topic for your niche.

If you choose to include longer more in depth content to wow your audience, it needs to be more appealing visually. Make sure to add in images, plenty of bullet points, subheadings, and headers. Also, it’s okay to send people to new pages for the rest of the content it’s essential good for SEO in today’s search engine climate.

For nearly 15 years, marketers have been relying on product display ads to boost advertising campaigns. A few short years ago targeting capabilities, advanced analytics, and product ads opportunities, weren’t available. It’s time to carry these results over to other marketing channels, get your marketers excited and improve advertising.  How can you do that?  Simple, with Product-Feed-based advertising.

Product-feed advertising on social media may be your solution for delivering highly targeted personalized ads to your audience. We have listed four advantages that product–feed advertising has to offer that you may want to consider.

1. Boost Ad-Performance

No one enjoys seeing ads they care nothing about. In all honesty, reaching the right people with the right message isn’t always easy but by automating the process, feed-based advertising creates efficiencies. It will boost ad performance in ways that truly move the needle.

2. Consistency

Feed-based advertising allows you to reach your audience with relevant products at the right time. Consistency is important not only as consumers return to your website, but also in the ads they view.  Although people move from device to device they are almost always logged in as themselves on social channels. Which means, you have access to a personalized and authenticated data.

3. Accelerate the Process

The purpose of programmatic feed advertising is to addresses the issue by accelerating the development process. This makes things easier for marketers. Rather than rely on a creative agency or in house team to put them together, assemble ads from the product feed itself. It will not only save you save time but money.

4. Ability to Scale

Feed-based advertising streamlines the process so that you can combine the right ad and or destination with the data you have. You can effectively manage and optimize social ad campaigns on Instagram and or Facebook at scale.

Conclusion

If you want a simple strategy that can be personalized, boost performance and retargeted for maximum impact, then get feed based advertising!

It will not only deliver consistent customer experiences but it will accelerate the creative development process.

Business owners love a sexy website. They tell us to make their website look cool. They want their users to be impressed by it, to spend time (and money) on it.

What they don’t usually think about are the really practical but crucial elements of a website that we don’t notice until they’re not there–or, worse, done poorly.

1. User Experience

Each website has its own purposes and objectives. None of them can be achieved if it isn’t stupid-easy to navigate the site. I think this is the single most important element of any and every site because I have no patience for websites that confuse me or present me with broken links or missing pages.

As we always say: know your target audience. Know why they’re there. Know what they want. Know how to get them to what they want.

The key to nailing this part? Test, test, test, then test some more. It doesn’t matter what’s on your site or how good it looks if people can’t get what they need, or leave out of frustration.

2. Mobile response

Do I need to say this? 80% of internet users own a smartphone. Hell, you’re probably reading this from yours! Make it mobile responsive.

3. Analytics

Installing Google analytics is so easy that I’m sure you already have it on your site. The question is: are you using it?

It’s the end of the year and you’re planning your marketing for next year (right?). Your analytics will tell you almost everything you need to craft the web site piece of your marketing strategy. How are people finding your site? What keywords are they using? How long do they spend? How many pages do they visit? Which pages to they visit?

You want to know traffic sources, keywords, and user behavior so you can audit your marketing, determine your ROI, and craft growth strategies for the future.

4. About

I hate when I got to a website and can’t figure out what the company does or what their product is for. Have you had this? You go to the about page and it says a bunch of lofty things about how the company has been utilizing innovative technology since 1986 and is a leader in its industry. What does that even mean?

Just one sentence somewhere on the site about what you actually do would be very helpful to the lost visitors who wander to your website from a social media link and wonder, What the hell am I doing here?

Point ‘em in the right direction. Send ‘em home.

5. Social Media Links

It may be a Millennial thing, but I always check out social media links when I visit a new website. It’s a great way to get a feel for the business. I want to know if they’re posting funny memes or if I can see Instagram updates on their Facebook feeds. Do people like them? Is there a new product coming out? Is it a cool company?

Put your social media links up and invite people along (it’s an easy way to grow your following–and effortlessly generate more leads).

Have digital marketers made the transition to the super-connected, mobile, digital marketplace? Not yet. According to the Adobe Digital Roadblock report, two-thirds of marketers expect their role to change over the next year, and over three-quarters expect changes over the next three years.

Marketers have shown at this day and age they must reinvent themselves! So how can you reinvent yourself and mature in digital marketing? Well some of the common themes are people, product and process. I have chosen the top 5 Roadblocks for you to avoid.

Hiring digital talent – Roadblock #1

Our enterprises must focus on digital-savvy talent in order to reinvent ourselves.

From digital social marketers, creative development and data analysts all these roles make a big impact in this industry. However, these roles are not rising to meet the demand and marketers will struggle with finding potential hires who possesses the characteristics to operate in a highly technical environment. Marketers should be looking to hire dual digital talented individuals. For example, look for candidates that are creative and analytical, possess leadership skills and digital acumen skills. You can reinvent your marketing ecosystem you just need to hire the right digital talent.

Data avoidance – Roadblock #2

If we don’t hire the digital talent to execute digital campaigns, our success will remain doubtful. We must have luminaries who understand data not just read data. Marketers tell us they believe the ideal marketer should take more risks, but by embracing the strength of data analysis, risks can be significantly reduced. We must arrange and schedule workflow to accommodate the constant feedback loops that permeate our digital world. For those seeking to reinvent themselves, embrace data!

Social media blackout -Roadblock #3

Our digital roadblock concluded that 61 percent of marketers believe social media will be the most critical marketing vehicle to deploy in the next few years. The fact that most brands are growing their social media marketing budgets, leads us to believe the future predictions that social media spend will double in the next five years is accurate.

We must adopt a social strategy and cultivate a social identity that supports that identity through a disciplined approach to audience engagement. Our enterprise must maximize ROI, be organized to leverage the speed, volume, and intensity of social media. Teams must be able to entertain, inform, educate, and persuade all at the same time, all while directing traffic to engage our offerings.

Lack of testing-Roadblock #4

Can you believe that half of the marketers stated that they used the “trusting my gut instinct” on where to invest marketing budgets. How can you rely on that? No need for gut instinct- testing allows us to approach senior leadership with quantifiable results, which may be leveraged in other business areas. Big Data is available to shape customer profiles, track consumer behavior, and monitor ROI. When we can show lift through testing based on data, we are able to justify marketing spend and improve productivity.

Technology adoption -Roadblock #5

Brands in any vertical have to embrace technology or suffer the consequences. Unfortunately, marketers tell us they are more comfortable adopting new technologies once they become mainstream. However, competition is too fierce to hold off consumer engagement.

There is seemingly no end to the integrated tools we have at our disposal such as dashboards that enable analytics, attribution, tag management, content management, and integrate marketing with business IT systems. If we adopt these tools, we can make reinvention possible.

Ultimately, our attempts to reinvent ourselves as digital marketers must point to digital ecosystem management. We must transition our brand and have the ability to dovetail creative development, asset deployment, and customer experiences with financial management. Let’s tear down these roadblocks and explore the frontier together!