As social media strategists, something we are often asked by clients and prospective clients is how they should measure the ROI of their social media activity.

How precious are likes? How best should we measure engagement? What is the value of an engaged community?

In the most basic of terms, social media communities can be a place to recruit, reward, engage, and refer. In today’s landscape they must be seen as yet another channel within the marketing ecosystem, and as such, sit alongside traditional ATL, PR, instore, OOH, and other digital channels.

Most brands with established communities are making use of platforms to increase brand awareness and create greater connections with the brand via its identity or tone.

Companies also see the value in social media as an alternative, or often a primary line of customer service, enabling them to speak directly to their audience with a timely and open dialogue.

For others, running direct response social media campaigns enable highly measurable interactions. Whether they work for brand positioning, sales, or talkability, what matters is that they work.

A great example of this is Starbucks’ ‘tweet a coffee’, which saw more than $200,000 in coffees bought for friends, as well as global visibility of the campaign.

To take a social media audience to the next level of value we encourage our brands to think of their communities as an engaged think tank – a place to release brand information first, or a cost effective testing ground for marketing concepts and brand direction.

Think of it as a way to help you mould and direct your marketing campaigns for maximum impact. Not only can you build greater loyalty among your fan base who are first to hear, but it’s also a cost effective way of simple testing to capture raw, unmoderated feedback.

A couple of ways in which this can work include testing the tone of messaging to see what resonates with your audience.

By this we mean taking brand concepts that may have passed their market research phase and adapting them into content posts, thereby getting broader exposure to proposed concepts in a cost effective way.

Or for even greater engagement, look to social media for NPD launches. Consider using a social media sampling campaign to leverage your pages to get new product in consumers’ hands. By incentivising fans to create content in exchange for a new release, you use your loyal consumers to create their own launch hype and promotion.

Of course this type of value added activity relies first on establishing engagement and ongoing conversations with your community.

A few key tips for building and maintaining an engaged audience twill enable you greater ROI in the future:

–        Source relevant content themes to support and reinforce your brand pillars

–        Benchmark yourself against best in class and continually review where you are

–        Continue to research best practice and stay ahead of the curve

–        Respond to your users whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral

–        Ensure your marketing channels are working together and talking to each other.

Karen Spear is director of shopper marketing at The Zoo Republic. She can be contacted at karen.spear@zoorepublic.com.au.