Monitoring
In social media, monitoring refers to the method of tracking, measuring and evaluating the marketing activities of a company’s on the social platform. From the definition, monitoring has various components as discussed under tracking, measuring, evaluating and tools used for monitoring on the social media (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013).
Tracking
Tracking refers to the method of finding and following details on the social media. The key to proper tracking plan is to acquire the relevant watchwords and phrases to get relevant information (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013).
As such, a tracking plan ought to bring to mind the best watchwords, the greatest social media and catch words that easily connect with the target group. If the plan does not yield the desired goals, it should be easy to manipulate searches (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013).
Measuring
The methods applied in measuring the impact of social media marketing remain debatable but various stakeholders agree that the field is quickly growing (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013). Consequently, various measuring methodologies, tools and metrics are in place.
However, much of the debate and innovations build on qualitative techniques at the expense of the quantitative techniques, as qualitative analysis seems easier to interpret (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013).
The results of social media marketing regarding qualitative goals like increasing brand knowledge and loyalty are long-term by default (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013). It takes time to get loyal customers on the social platform but these efforts eventually bear fruits. However, such fruits must be measurable both qualitatively and quantitatively through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as discussed below.
Key Performance Indicators (KIPs)
These refer to a combination of determinable standards used by a firm to measure or collate performance aimed at meeting the firm’s objectives. Qualitative KPIs are descriptive, include such indicators like customer satisfaction while quantitative KPIs are measureable, and include such indicators like percentage increase in profits, customers among other indicators (Smart KPIs.com, 2013).
Evaluation
Evaluation derives from key performance indicators since it is the method of construing gathered and gauged information to acquire insights from the information (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013).
Evaluation serves to generate a deep description on whether the social media marketing activities succeed or fail to achieve the desired goals. Several free monitoring tools are available on the internet and they include Google Trends, Google Reader among others (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013).
Budget
Social media marketing is a new concept and there is no standard budget set for media marketing. However, a survey carried out by Altimeter Group revealed that companies spent between 66,000 US dollars and 1,364,000 US dollars depending on the age and size of the company (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013).
Return on Investment
The company should be in a position to determine if the ratios regarding return on investment are positive or negative. A positive ratio depicts a return while a negative ratio shows a loss. Return on investment results from deducting costs from sales and breaking down the result by the expenses (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013).
It is hard to measure return on investment in the social media since most goals are qualitative by nature. Experts have come up with proxy ROI that measure the long-term results of media marketing (Barker, Barker, Bormann, & Neher, 2013).
References
Barker, M. S., Barker, D. I., Bormann, N. F., & Neher, K. E. (2013). Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach (1st Edition). New York: Cengage Learning.
Mashable. (2013). Social Media Marketing. Web.
Smart KPIs. (2013). On Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Web.