5 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Marketing Plan Will be Successful

Social Media is one of the most powerful and cost effective ways to market your products and services online today but the biggest complaint I hear about using Social Media for marketing, is how do I measure the ROI or return on my investment?

A successful Social Media Marketing campaign will help to establish your credibility in your market, increase your visibility and build your authority online so that you can develop relationships with people in your target audience.

Those relationships will later lead to increased revenues but that does not happen overnight. Social Media is a long term strategy. That being said, I am often asked the question, how can I tell in the early stages of my Social Media marketing plan if I am on the right path?

The early benefits can be somewhat difficult to measure but here are 5 indicators that your plan is working and that all you need to do is be patient while you build the know, like and trust factor so your friends and fans with feel comfortable doing business with you.

1. Your followers grow even when you are not specifically adding them. If you are giving the people in your target market the content they want, your subscribers will seem to grow magically. This happens because people see your updates in their friends and followers streams and like what they see so they follow you as well.

2. Thought leaders in your niche follow you and actually have conversations with you. When the important people in your niche are following you that usually means they have found you to be a worthy person to connect with. It’s even better when you can get them to join in a conversation with you!

3. Lots of people have added you to their lists. The list feature on Twitter is a very valuable feature because it tells you how many people have you on to their lists. When thought leaders add you to their lists that is even more exciting.

4. People begin to thank you for what you post. When you start to get people thanking you for your useful information on the social networks you are doing something right! Lots of RTs is also a good thing.

5. Your Klout score begins to rise. Klout.com is an application that measures your influence on Twitter. It uses many different criteria and I recommend you visit the site and read all about it. Check your score after you have been online for a month or so and then recheck it once a month to see your progress

If all the above things are happening you should begin to reap the benefits of increased sale in about 2-4 months. If you do not see an increase in the indicators above it may be time to re-think your strategy.

In my next Blog Post I will discuss why you might not be getting any sales.