Over the past couple years I’ve heard a lot of complaints from people saying they don’t know how to properly measure their own social media marketing campaigns. These tend to be smaller companies that eventually decide to just “trust that it’s working”. Big mistake. How do you know that you’re not just wasting your time getting involved with social media? How do you know you can’t be doing something better? Well here are 5 easy steps that anyone can take to measure their own campaigns.

There are dozens of advanced tools you could use to help you with each of these steps (thanks to your votes, we’re developing our own, called Dynamic Insights), but the process and ideas are still the same. Everyone should be measuring the success of their social media efforts, if only for informational purposes. Ignorance is not bliss; it’s irresponsible.

1) Pick your platform

The first step to measuring your own campaigns is to pick the platform (and campaign) that you’ll be measuring. Each platform, whether it’s an online forum, microblogging platform or email newsletter, is measured differently. There are different metrics and different ways to measure success for each platform, so isolate each one. To choose the platform that’s right for you, you should develop a social media plan first, if you haven’t done so already. Figure out what you want to achieve from your social media campaign (increased traffic, sales conversions, awareness building), and pick the platform that’s best for you. Each individual campaign is different as well, so if you’re running multiple campaigns on one platform, be sure to make note of that before taking step 2.

2) Select the most important metrics to your business

Once you know what platform you’ll be using for your marketing efforts, it’s time to pick the right metrics to measure. If you know that you want to drive sales, then you need to focus on measuring conversions (or total volume of sales), not traffic. If you want to change what people are saying about your brand, focus on the change in sentiment with which your brand name is used. (SocialMention is a decent start for that). You want to be sure that you choose key metrics relevant to your own business, rather than just picking one. Choosing the wrong measurement metrics is like trying to gauge your oil level by looking at your speedometer. Good luck.

3) Define what success is for you

Success is different for everyone. After selecting the right metrics, you have to decide what you mean by a “successful” campaign. Just remember a social media marketing campaign, like many web projects, is an albatross. What that means, is that success can be slow going and is rarely overnight. It could take weeks, months or years for you to grow the audience you truly want. But be patient and measure success realistically. Does a successful campaign mean 100 extra sales conversions? A traffic spike of 25%? Create goals and deadlines. If you’re not reaching your expectations, find out why.

4) Track metrics over time

Taking a one-time measurement of your marketing campaign isn’t useful or beneficial to your business or to the efforts you’ve made. Everything you do should be measured over time – it’s the only way to measure change. Make an effort to set up a daily, weekly or monthly check on performance. Those few extra unique users or Facebook fans a day add up over time, and keeping a running log (use an Excel spreadsheet if you need) will help you see that. Plus, it’ll allow you to analyze what buttons/levers were most effective in creating success. If you’ve been tracking each metric daily for six months, it’ll be much easier to do a postmortem once your campaign concludes.

5) Do a postmortem analysis

If you’re running multiple campaigns or separate offers, a postmortem analysis is essential. Take a look at the entire length of your promotion and see where the most noticeable spikes (or dips) are. Figure out what caused these events. Maybe it was something you did, or maybe it was something external. Examine the progress you made over the course of the entire campaign – how much did your [insert metric here] increase over the course of the entire campaign? A postmortem is also one of the best ways to measure ROI (return on investment), as you have all the variables – [insert metric here] measurements before and after as well as costs incurred. If you’re running a continuous campaign (ex: managing a social media profile like Twitter), then do interval-based analyses at certain points in time (say, every 6 months). You’ll be surprised at how much you learn once you have proper context and hindsight.