Summary of “The ROI of social media marketing”

Social Media KPIs and Tools for Measurement

In his video “The ROI of social media marketing”, Carlos Gil introduces the concept: “return on investment” in the field of social media marketing. Under this topic, Gil first discusses how to set up a strategy to create a significant business return on investment. As an organization, it is important to ensure the customers’ network, understand the usage of social media from competitors, and identify the purpose of utilizing social media. Then, Gil talks about the four pillars of social media, which are content, community, consistency, and conversion, and explains their characteristics. Community is the most effective element based on its diversity of function.  After understanding the element on social media marketing strategy, organizations should know what metrics they need to measure based on content and purpose. Gil offers some possible metrics can be measured, such as impressions, engagement, views, and the average watch time. Organizations can get insight into the content’s performance based on these metrics. However, what tools can be used by the organization to measure these metrics? Gil provides different answers based on the size and need of business. These tools can help organizations to monitor all the activities and performance on social media. In order to make a strategic decision, organizations are able to use their own data to choose the most effective tool to measure social media performance. Gil mentions various examples for different platforms, such as Facebook Creator Studio, Twitter Insights, and Instagram Analytics. During the analytic process, the organizations can retain their advantage and fix the issue on time.

Decoding Social Media Analytics: What Does It Mean?

This section discusses the ways to discover valuable information through social media and the meaning of this data. Gil first uses Facebook Insights as an example. Facebook Insights is able to make Facebook page performance become a visual overview of the different time periods. The organization can monitor various components in its Facebook account. The organization can have a valuable reference document to do any improvement regarding Facebook. After understanding the data from Facebook Insights, it is time to create ROI in the sale via Factbook ads. Facebook ads are friendly to various businesses, no matter the size, and effective based on demographic and interest-based data. What the organization should do is set aside a monthly Facebook ad budget based on need. In order to get engagement, repurposing top-performing can be a helpful method. The organization is able to use Facebook Insights to find out the most popular content and repurposing. The next step is calling on action on purchasing through Facebook. The organization’s Facebook page can become a shoppable online storefront where the product can be listed for sale. Since this function is paid, the organization needs to set aside the marketing budget to run the ads on Facebook.

Another helpful tool to discover data is Instagram Insights. However, the components that are monitored in Instagram Insights are different from Facebook Insight. Gil mentioned that “Like” does not have so much meaning; in contrast, the organization should track the change on Comments, Bookmarks, and Shares. These metrics can identify the content on Instagram is engaging the audiences or not.

Driving Measurable ROI on Each Channel

Gil displays the ways to drive ROI within the various channel in this section. Based on the value of LinkedIn in the business field, it is necessary for the business to build its own brand on LinkedIn. For getting more attention from the target audience on LinkedIn, the organization should optimize the LinkedIn profile. The following steps can use in the profile’s optimization:

1. Add industry-relevant keywords that have large searching traffic in the headline.
2. Set the closest metropolitan as “your city” that allows the target audience to find you easier.
3. Monitor the searching stats to ensure the profile is existing in the search result.
4. Join a relevant group and focus on quality connections and interactions.

After optimizing the profile, the organization can reach out to more potential customers or the potential buyers might come for the organization.  Finding out who views the profile and try to identify the reason. However, the organization needs to remember do not sell the product or service to these people if they just view the profile. It is better to start a small conversation with them in order to build a deeper relationship.

YouTube is another tool that is able to drive ROI. Since YouTube differs from social media, the website will run ads in the users’ video and users can create profit in this pattern. However, it does not mean the organization can earn views and revenue without any preparation. YouTube requires the channel to own at least 1000 followers to run ads for profits. After achieving this requirement, users can decide which video they want to monetize. Meanwhile, the organization needs to monitor the top video in the past 28 days and analyze them.  YouTube can also combine with other social media platforms. 

Once the organizations understand the procedure of earning money on YouTube, they can focus on the optimization of the video. Gil provides some tips regarding this topic:

1. Set up a purpose for the channel and edit the video professionally.
2. Ensure the title of the video is relevant to the targeted industry or city.
3. Set aside a budget to create video content for branding.
4. Support a channel that can promote the local community.

The next tool for driving ROI is Twitter, which is similar to YouTube. Its similarity with YouTube requires the user to be active in the account. The organization needs to understand the key searching words from customers, create content consistently, and respond quickly. Meanwhile, just like operating other social media, monitor the performance of Twitter.

Bonus Strategies for Maximizing ROI

In this section, Gil continues to discuss the tools that can generate and maximize ROI effectively. The Twitter card is a method that can specialize in the organization’s content from thousands of tweets. Twitter card can help the user to gain more traffic without pushing your followers to click the unknown link.

Instagram stories under a new marketing strategy, which is social media storytelling. Since the lifeline of Instagram stories is 24 hours, the content should be short and attractive. Gil mentions some tips can make the story perform better:

1. Post quality content.
2. Create content consistently.
3. Make the caption short and relevant to the audiences.
4. Tag location.
5. Utilize hashtags.

After discussing different social media in regard to driving ROI. Gil indicates some skills that are valuable in various platforms and writing ability is one of them. When writing AD copy for social media, the content should be short, direct, and objective. The angle of the content comes from the customer but not the marketers. Initiating purchase is good; however, establish a relationship with customers is more important. YouTube is a website that contains large traffic. In this case, the embedding website link in the video can drive traffic and potential warm leads to the organization’s website. One reminder is the embedded link should point to the website that own by the channel user. In order to make the content worthy, the organization needs to monitor the website’s traffic derived by the post in social media.  Gil recommends two cost-effective tools for tracking, which are Bit.ly and Google Campaign URL Builder. Using these tools can help the organization to find out the best-performing posts within a period of time and the organization can repost them to expand their life cycle.

Conclusion

The most impressive thing from this video is the way that uses YouTube to drive ROI. YouTube is a unique social media platform compared to other social media websites; it is a video-based social networking tool.  In this case, the procedure of generating profit is different based on its uniqueness. Self-employed and freelancers can gain more benefits under this pattern since they have a limited budget for branding and marketing. YouTube is an effective start point for small business owners to conduct marketing strategy, get attention from the audience, and build a foundation for further expanding. In the real-world, more and more business owners start a business on YouTube and the brand is growing significantly. Jeffree Star is one of the hottest YouTubers and he founded his e-commerce makeup brand, Jeffree Star Cosmetics, in 2014. After that, he starts to promote his brand on YouTube. Until June 2019, his YouTube channel acquired 15 Million subscribers and over 1.7 billion views. Meanwhile, his cosmetics brand is worth multi-million dollars. Jeffree start his cosmetic career with almost nothing, but his video on YouTube helps him to find the first bucket of gold in this industry and he still promotes his product on YouTube. The story of Jeffree shows the value of YouTube in driving ROI for a brand.

Reference

LinkedIn Learning. (2019, October 9). The ROI of social media marketing. Retrieved fromhttps://www.linkedin.com/learning/social-media-marketing-roi-2/the-roi-of-social-media-marketing?u=2109516

Jeffree Star. (2020, March 13). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffree_Star