Social Media Success: Ways to Measure Your Impact

Social media is a great way for not-for-profit organizations to build brand awareness, raise funds,  and increase engagement around a particular cause or event. It also requires planning, staff commitment and knowledge of various social media tools. When not-for-profits undertake social media campaigns, there’s always a question of whether those social media initiatives will pay off and if it’s cost-effective for the organization.  To help answer that question, we’ve outlined a few tools you can use to help streamline your social media efforts and measure effectiveness.
 
Google Analytics is an easy and FREE way to monitor your web presence.  First, you will need to set up a free Gmail account and link it to your website. Google Analytics gives you access to monthly web and social media metrics, demographic data and insights on user trends. You can also set up notifications to track specific social media and blog campaigns, keywords and webpages. Not only can you view this data daily but it’s a great way to help guide future content development and your overall social marketing efforts.

Google has a number of other helpful resources for your organization as you work on developing a digital strategy and growing your online presence. For example, do you know which external websites are linking directly back to your organization’s site?  This is worth knowing for risk purposes as well marketing ones.  To find this out for free, simply go to Google and type: “Links:www.yourdomain.com” and there they are -- every website that is linked to you!

Alexa is an Amazon.com company which for a monthly fee can provide feedback on your website and social activity.
 
Klout will analyze your Twitter activity (for a fee) in great detail and provide you with useful insights. 

In addition to analytics and the tools mentioned above, there are also free platforms available to help simplify posting and scheduling content to multiple platforms.  Hootsuite and TweetDeck are free services which are very easy to set up.  They provide powerful tools to help manage your posts, track social media activity across platforms, and monitor keywords and mentions.
 
What we’ve mentioned here is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are many more useful social media and web tools that can benefit your organization and save you time and money. Explore the options and see what works for your reporting needs, and you’ll be on your way to achieving your goals!