7 Steps To Calculate Your Social Media ROI [Infographic]

Every brand on the planet is always trying to maximize the return on their investments. When you start planning a marketing campaign, especially in social media, you usually nub it down to what it will cost you and what you will most likely get in return. That’s how it always works. But when it comes to calculating your success, it’s a little bit more tricky. First of all, no metrics on the Internet are the same. Every Facebook like gained has a different value than a retweet for example, and calculating the overall social media ROI (return on investment) is of course both time consuming and a little bit tricky if you don’t know how to do it. There are several formulas which you can use for each social media network, and in this article I am going to cover the most popular ones.

To calculate social media ROI, you first have to have a bunch of metrics that you have gathered throughout your social media marketing campaign. Make sure you have the correct metrics since it will highly impact the end result. When you have it all divided into each social network, you can finally start calculating your social media ROI.

As I mentioned in the beginning, there are a lot of different formulas to calculate social media ROI, but in this article, we are going to consult the infographic presented to us by Ignite. They have compiled an infographic called 7 Steps To Calculate The ROI Of Your Social Media, which consists of 7 formulas, each for a specific metric. With the help of these, you can easily calculate your social media ROI.

However, be aware that prices change all the time, and so does influence. You will have to keep an eye on your metrics each and every time you plan a new social media campaign, otherwise your social media ROI will become polluted by previous metrics that no longer make sense.

I have a word of advice to everyone who is planning their online social media marketing campaign right at this moment – the worst thing you can ever do after launching your marketing campaign is to just let it take its course. It’s a mistake that plenty of brands have sadly made. After launching your marketing campaign, you have to maintain and nourish it in order to show positive social media ROI at the end of it. Without your continuous support and guidance, your social media ROI will probably suck compared to what it could be.

Look at it from the perspective that you and/or your brand is the foundation on which your social media campaign is resting upon. Take that away, and it will crumble. Keep feeding it with comments, new content and of course interaction and you will find that your social media ROI will be a whole lot better than if you were to just let it be. Social media isn’t what will make it go viral, you are. Social media is just the tool that you use to win the race.