When social media started gaining traction, a common hesitation businesses had was being unable to track the results of their efforts. Although social media marketing is now an activity that can be tracked in detail, that doesn’t necessarily mean doing so is easy. Given that much of people’s online activity is spread across multiple devices, plenty of businesses still struggle to with social media measuring (ROI).

For any business that’s committed to social media marketing but not completely confident with their current ability to measure results, we’ve put together a list of steps to accurately measure the success of any social media marketing campaign:

1. Know Your KPIs

Measuring any type of campaign done through social media starts with knowing what you’re trying to accomplish. By identifying one or more key performance indicators (KPIs) for a campaign, you’ll have the right metrics in place to track.

2. Align and Assign

Building awareness and driving revenue are just two examples of KPIs that may apply to a social media marketing campaign. If you’re having trouble pinpointing the right KPI for a campaign, the best way to find it is to think about what best aligns with your business. Once you’ve figured that out, be sure to assign a value to your KPIs.

3. Use the Right Tools

The reason you need to not only identify your KPIs but also assign value to them is so you can maximize the accuracy of your tracking. Having values for what you’re tracking will allow the tools you use to provide meaningful data. In terms of what tools you should be using, Google Analytics is a must. Even though it can take a little work to get everything set up correctly for tracking in Google Analytics, you’ll be able to get a lot of value from this data. In addition to Google Analytics, a social media dashboard can provide additional metrics that are very helpful for measuring the success of a social media marketing campaign.

4. Create Benchmarks

Social media marketing is something that works best when it’s done on an ongoing basis. One reason is it provides an opportunity to figure out exactly what’s working and what isn’t. Another is ongoing efforts allow you to create benchmarks. If possible, you’ll want to create internal benchmarks for your social media marketing, as well as competitive ones. Having these benchmarks will provide a simple but effective way to quickly see how well a specific campaign is performing at any time.

If you want to learn even more about measuring the success of a social media marketing campaign, be sure to take a look at our  social media certification  program which covers this and a number of other topics in detail.