For years the question has been, “What’s the ROI of social?” But social is about people, right? Sure, you can sell things with in social, but as we’ve been saying for a while, listening is key in social and building relationships is the number one priority. We also see a value in rewarding people in social channels with access to exclusive commerce offers. So how do you measure all of that stuff together in a meaningful way?

Return on Fan

We focus on three core metrics that drive a healthy social strategy: Relationships, Relevancy, and Results.

We’re measuring relationships across social networks and looking at the growth and lift in communities. We’re tracking relevancy to help brands offer more interesting content to their audiences. And we’re measuring the results: transactions that are monetary and non-monetary and how communities are reacting to campaigns. This builds a multi-dimensional view of a brand’s relationship with its audience, from interaction to transaction.

This core philosophy is the foundation of the Moontoast Social Analytics Suite, which we built from the ground up with digital marketers and social media managers in mind. See the full story of how your marketing efforts create new content, which in turn generates interaction, leading to opt-in (buying or otherwise), and finally spurring community growth while brand ambassadors spread the word. Revenue, shopping cart, and social data are all intertwined, providing a full picture that, very quickly, identifies the key points to a particular campaigns success.

Your data tells a story. What posts drove sales, buzz, or growth? Over time you’re able to make more informed decisions by seeing exactly what types of content and offers motivate your social communities. All of this is provided on one screen where you’re never more than two clicks away from drilling deep into a specific data point.

The Keys to a Successful Campaign

Data is beautiful to have but it’s better when you can use it to learn for the future. We’ve done some learning ourselves and have found that a well-run social campaign has the following:

1. Create expectation
2. Introduce the offer
3. Immediate measurement – tweak and optimize
4. Build traffic through repeat posting and virality
5. Shut it down with style
6. Analyze, and learn from, what just happened

With the Moontoast Social Analytics Suite, you can easily see not only the timeline of your messaging, but also the audience reaction to and participation with each piece of content. Track spikes in traffic, fan growth, and transactions with granular data like reach, likes, shares, and retweets. All of this data together helps you react quickly to trends and community behavior.

We are at an exciting and growing time in the life of the web and it requires that we all think differently. Fans don’t want to be pushed through a funnel; they want experiences. As social marketers, we want to create memorable experiences for our audience. For a brand to stand out from the rest, the core experience has to resonate with people. Data helps us to look at how people react to the content we’re giving them. It helps us get better over time. And data, when used effectively, can turn golf claps into gasps.

In this episode, Tim is up late to launch the latest version of the Moontoast Social Analytics Suite. If you’ve ever been challenged to explain the ROI of social media, this is a tool you need. Not only are we able to tie transactional data to social activity, but we also give you the tools to learn how to build better relationships with people though social networks.