Social media isn’t like other traditional methods of marketing like direct mail or e-mail campaigns. These have set objectives and ways to track response mechanisms to check open and response rates.
Social media, on the other hand because of the nature of the beast, doesn’t have those types of metrics in place. Social media isn’t like other traditional methods of marketing like direct mail or e-mail campaigns…and please don’t do it because everyone else is!
Thomas McMahon in a recent post, 7 considerations for tracking social media success, outlines some great suggestions on how you may want to evaluate your social media tracking.
Here are some highlights:
- Quality over Quantity - The only really important numbers are the ones that are following you that are truly engaged and interested in what you’re saying.
- Hearing vs. Listening - You need to realize that not everyone is always hearing you. You want to connect with your listeners and hopefully get them engaged.
- Participate and Engage - Social media is about involved. You just can’t post articles…you need to participate in conversations.
- Be Where Your Action Is - Define your niche market and then find out where like-minded people hang out. Those are the forums, blogs and communities you need to be active in.
Remember, social media is a long-term investment with no short-term ROI. Be patient, build your network and trust within your target audience and social will pay off in the long run.
What other considerations should be on this list? I’d love to hear from you.
John Sonnhalter
Welcome to my blog, Tradesmen Insights. I'm the master of one trade, founder of a B-to-B marketing communications firm to companies that target tradesmen in construction, industrial and MRO markets.







Another good way to tradesmen to make their advertising message more effective to use personal urls. An example of a Personal URL would be: yoursite.com/Jim.Smith and when “Jim” visits his personal url, the website will usually be customized to him. It could even include this such as estimates for their remodel for example. It also allows the marketer to track who is responding. Learn more at: http://purlem.com.
Good point and I’ve used them for clients and they do work. Thanks for the comment.