Three steps to get better ROI on your social media
3 steps to get better ROI on your social media
By Stephanie Oley
Designed to keep us hooked, social media is now the primary tool for content consumption. The total average screen time per person on a daily basis is just under 7 hours globally, with around 2.5 hours of this spent scrolling through social media. No wonder social media is also a goldmine for business.
If you are a social media marketer, you’ll know that your job is not easy. Although social media is free to use, good content is made by skilled creators. What’s more, planning, targeting, measuring and optimising that content takes craft and experience. These two skillsets are neither free nor easy.
To lift the returns on your business’ social media investment – or the ROI of your social media – there are three important steps to take.
Step 1: Only share quality content
Your social media followers don’t want to be bombarded with ads. They’ll also scroll right past your stale motivational quotes, uninspiring photos and me-me-me posts. Instead, create a content feed that revolves around your audience’s questions.
Are they obsessed with quality? Create videos demonstrating your product’s workmanship. Are they moved by trust? Show how your team members, systems or suppliers go the extra mile each time. Are your followers interested in the social angle? Create content that shows an ideal world future, made better thanks to the values that your team lives and breathes by.
We live amid radical online movements like cancel culture and #metoo. Every other day there is a new viral challenge. People use their social media presence to create a dialogue, and your business should do the same.
This does not mean you’re forbidden from making sales posts. Just reduce the frequency – perhaps to one out of every 10 posts. So for example, if you are a water cooler business, much of your social media content might be about mindfulness, nature and the makings of pure water. A select number of posts would be about the product.
Remember, an informed, engaged audience adds more long-term value to your brand than short-term impulse buyers. Invest in content that inspires ongoing conversations with your community.
Step 2: Use a data-led approach
Although quality creative content is a start on social media, it’s no longer enough to drive returns. Organic posts on Facebook now achieve only 5.2% reach compared to paid content, according to analytics tool Hootsuite. Pages with less than 10,000 followers get an engagement rate of 0.52%.
This is where the data-crunching comes in. Social media marketers use a range of analytics tools to understand ROI, especially by exploring the kind of content engages users the most. Whichever is your preference, here are the three main social media metrics to focus on.
CTR or click through rate
This is the total number of clicks your ad or post gets in a fixed period of time over a number of impressions. If your CTR is low, it means your audience did not find your content interesting enough to engage with it. Social media algorithms reward posts that already have a good CTR, by getting it more reach.
CPM or cost per 1,000 impressions
Although we’ve listed it second, CPM is perhaps the most relevant metric to social media ROI. Essentially, it’s the ratio of what you invest to get 1,000 impressions. If getting to 1,000 is breaking your bank, you will need a different approach to your campaign
Video watch views
Video content can deliver some of your greatest social media ROI. Videos appeal to an audience more than other formats because of its similarity to physical communication. That’s why algorithms now reward highly viewed videos, giving them more reach than others. If you can get this tool into your marketing toolkit, your brand will be invincible.
Step 3: Never stop learning about social media marketing
The industry is evolving fast, and demand for education on this subject is increasing. Formal educational institutions are yet to adapt to this need on a large scale, but that doesn’t mean you’re on your own.
CCE’s social media experts estimate that around 70 per cent of social media practitioners have an intermediate skill level, and 30 per cent are beginners. Regardless of which point you are at, you should invest into raising your skill bar as high as you can.
Social media marketing courses with an ROI focus include Experienced Marketers Course: Social Media ROI and Social Media Advertising and Website Optimisation Course. Businesses can also learn to master specific social platforms, with options such as the Facebook Advertising Course and Social Media Marketing: Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Taught by top industry practitioners, these workshops focus on principles and models that will remain relevant even in the face of ever-changing social media paradigms.
In a competitive world where even free entertainment presents opportunities for profit, you have to stay ahead of the curve.