As social media has become such a large and undefined group of applications, it can be difficult to identify which platforms will work best for your company. Social media is a fantastic way to experiment with marketing ideas, but unless you have clearly delineated, and auditable, targets, you’ll never know how truly successful any given campaign is – so, how do you set and track your social media targets?

Setting your targets is the same as for any other form of marketing – do you want to drive sales or increase engagement with your brand? Are you looking to create links back to your website or position yourself as a market thought-leader? Choosing just one or two clearly defined and focused aims will make selecting your platforms a lot easier; for example, a brand looking to engage will focus heavily on tools such as Twitter and Facebook, while one looking to share knowledge may prefer to utilise a social bookmark site, such as Digg.

Analysis should be undertaken monthly; this is a short enough time that you stay in control of your data, but long enough to hint at developing and emerging trends in your traffic. Many companies have their own form of analytical tool, but Google’s analytics is perfectly adequate if you don’t want to invest. Pick a handful of metrics to compare and focus on these figures month-to-month to see what effect any campaign is having. Possible metrics include bounce rate, source traffic and time on site.

Taking a focused approach will allow you to see where the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign lie, and adjust them accordingly, so that you are constantly improving your results.

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