When a company decides to make the jump and start a social media campaign, it’s a good start. If you’re one of these, and you’re committed to it, that’s the first of the fundamentals to engage in digital publicity and engagement. The second fundamental is to translate this commitment into a long-term priority with resources and time dedicated to the process – social media engagement is not a project but part of your operations. Operations are built on structured processes that transform inputs into outputs. Successful operations are those which result in output that meet the corporate mission, vision and objectives.

This brings us to the third fundamental. And that is understanding where social media fits in the corporate mission, vision and what part of the objectives can be better achieved using social media. This requires an understanding of what social media can and cannot do. The social media campaign should then be given clear objectives – ones which can be measured during and at the end of the campaign to determine its success. Most companies want more users to visit their website, make more online purchases or understand their product line better. And so they would ask:

• How many hits to our website originate from the campaign? (and which parts of it? facebook, you tube videos, corporate linkedin profile etc…)
• Do they land on the right pages of our site?
• Who are our users? (Yes, facebook for example allows you to segment your campaign so you know what’s working!)
• How do they navigate in our site when they land there, and do they end up making that purchase we wanted them to make?
• What are users saying on the social media pages we manage? How many press “like” or leave a comment?

This type of analysis measures the effectiveness and its conversion into the objectives of the campaign. Good luck!