How to Evaluate Success of Social Media against SEO

This is a guest post by Deepak Gupta.

Since Google introduced Humming Bird update the battle between SEO and SMM has become intense. Some people argue that SEO is easier to implement because you can easily find out your progress and route of the traffic coming to your website. The problem arises here. The concept that there is no tool to evaluate progress of your social media campaign is absolutely wrong.

SEO is never going to get out of an internet marketing strategy. In fact, it is going to retain its lead position forever. However, more people are now using Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to spread their business through social media. Most of these novices are unaware of the tools with which they can evaluate the success of social media against SEO.

In reality, measuring success of your social media is quite an easy task. With some of the simple tricks, you can measure return on investment (ROI) and the conversion rate from your social media. Here is how you can evaluate success of social media against SEO.

Analyze from Where Your Traffic is Coming

When it comes to SEO analytics, almost all of us know how to analyze coming traffic. There is no other more popular tool than Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools. But only a few know that similar tool could be used to track the traffic coming from your social media accounts as well. If you want to measure success of any marketing technique, it is essential that you must know how much traffic is coming to your website; from where is this traffic coming and how many clicks are converting into conversions.

With the help of Google Analytics, you can view the impressions and click through rates; you can review and analyze your keywords by observing current trends in search engines and can see from which social media page are you getting major clicks and leads.

Does Traffic Really Means that Your Social Media is Working?

Often it is interpreted that more traffic you get more are the chances that your social media is doing wonders for your marketing campaign. But, this notion is not always true. In fact, in most of the cases, the traffic that is present on your social media pages is of no use as most of the visitors leave usually without performing any real action (say a click, a purchase, a share etc.)

Getting more crowds and less number of real customers is exactly same as adding irrelevant keywords to rank higher in certain searches whereas getting almost negligible conversion rates and clicks through searches performed on that particular set of keywords. Here content is the king of the strategy. You should focus more on writing and posting useful and relevant content for your target audience rather than attracting more and more traffic that does not perform any action.

Build Followship

Some people argue that the number of clicks, shares and followers does not count for the success of the social media campaign. This is absurd and is an excuse to avoid responsibility of the outcome. The shares, followers and number of likes can actually determine the success of your social media campaign. Incentive campaigns and giveaway initiatives like “share with 5 friends give comment and get this product free” can truly give you more followers, shares and comments. Once you have achieved followers next big task is to keep them engaged.

Post relevant and useful content so that your followers do have something to stick to. Make sure that the posts are creative and deliver what you have promised.

Give Your Social Media Some Time

The game of social media is not about days and weeks rather it is about months and years. Like SEO, you cannot claim instant success on social media. In one month, you might get 40 followers. But, if this number persists, there are chances that after 8 months, you would have 3200 followers, and the number will go on. So this time when you are launching your social media campaign, give it at least 4 – 6 months before you conclude any result or declare it a failure.

Spread Business through Social Media

Remember that social media is to promote your business, just a small part of big machinery. You have other things to do, like running your business, searching for the market compatibility and keeping an eye on the activities of your competitors. Give your social media campaign some time to flourish, meanwhile do some other tasks.

There is No Battle between Social Media and SEO

A good internet marketer should understand and accept this fact that there is no battle between social media and SEO. The real game is to take both  the strategies in harmony in such a way that they complement each other. Social media is on the rise and SEO is never going out of the scene, so make your strategy accordingly.

Conclusion

Therefore, those who are of the view that ‘SEO is Dead’ must ponder again as SEO is an integral part of the internet marketing and is never going to fade out. However, the need of the hour here is that the right tactics must be employed so that both the SEO and Social media can be used efficiently gain success.

About the author
Deepak Gupta is a successful online blogger and expert social media marketing consultant. He is associated with a reputed social media marketing company that provides social media marketing services and help entrepreneurs spread business through social media.