When you think of ways to measure your social media return on investment (ROI) you’ll likely come to the conclusion that it is not a straightforward task. This can have the effect of discouraging companies from adapting and investing in social media, as they don’t understand how visible the returns on their efforts (and spend) will be.

But what if there were simple but clever things you could do in order to increase your sales?

If you are a smart business with a social media presence, you will have these elements in place:

1. connection with consumers via social media
2. relationship with brand advocates
3. presence on the right social media channels which are relevant to your business

So what is the secret?

Your social campaign should be focused around channels that can make a difference to your strategy. As social networks are adapting very quickly to fulfil user’s needs and keep up with their digital interests and habits, brands need to take advantage of these trends by adapting to them and making this interactive experience more interesting.

Understand your audience

To be able to engage, build awareness and drive sales you need to understand your audience. The most common mistake that brands make is having a self-belief that they can dictate the routes of conversation. But actually the success is where the social networker is.

Consumers do their research before making a purchase, and social media is becoming one of their main sources of information. Not only do they research a particular product they’re already aware of, they use it as a discovery tool.

Know what you hope to achieve

Before you jump into social media or decide to support your existing campaign with something new, you need to ask yourself what your objectives are. Don’t follow others just for the sake of it, like with anything, it’s worth taking time to develop your own approach and concept which will be able to stand out.

Setting objectives will help you take the appropriate actions depending on what you’re looking for, for example:

• growing your social community
• increasing awareness
• boosting engagement with your current fan base

What can you do to drive sales?

There is a lot you can do to drive sales. You can use different ways of rewarding your audience and through these you can reach and develop relationships with brand advocates. You can drive the user’s need for ‘discovery’ by combining incentives and simple challenges. What you have to remember is that your followers and Fans want to be entertained in a clever way. Take your time to establish how you are going to do so, as your actions can help you to drive revenue and increases interest in you, your website, campaigns and products.

Quick tips:

• run competitions – everyone like a good bargain, and even better if you can get something for free
• reward those who give you on-going support
• link your competitions to website product pages and spread the word about the fun on other channels
• include your social media icons in your emails, business cards and offline prints
• don’t miss the trick with using video to drive revenue
• invest in making compelling content that will be encouraging your audience to share
• give clear calls-to-action – nobody likes to take part in something over complicated
• make sure your channels are linking to your website and other channels
• do not dismiss channels: a very good lesson gained from 2012 was that despite many people feeling like Google+ had failed to deliver, it carries with it many advantages (to search for example) which everyone wishes to take advantage of.

By Kasia Piekut