Measuring social media success for summer camps

As part of the Social Summer Camp social media program for summer camps, I work with each camp to put together a short, medium and long-term measurement plan. A solid measurement plan is one of the most important aspects of a great social media program. Many summer camps are using social media, but have not figured out how to measure success.

If you are running a social media program and not measuring results, try some of these short-term measurement ideas:

Using Google Analytics to measure lift in site traffic:

Measure a lift in traffic by looking at site traffic for the entire year and seeing if it increased with certain efforts. Look at the percentage of new visitors to your site and where they came from.

Driving traffic to a specific page on the website:

One option is to drive traffic to a page on your website that doesn’t typically get a lot of traffic. This way, you can measure the lift in site traffic and get a better understanding of who these visitors are. You can determine if they are new visitors and how much time they are spending on the site.

Measuring lift in donations (if you are a non-profit camp):

Measure a lift in donations by looking at the number and dollar amount of donations each month last year and seeing if there is a lift in these numbers. You can also consider running messaging with a special code that you ask users to enter when they donate. For example, “please enter code 2013 when you donate.”

Reach:

Measure a lift in awareness by measuring “reach,” which means unique people who saw an activity. Look at the reach of your current social activities and measure a lift in reach as well.

These are just a couple of ideas for short-term social media measurement. If you are interested in learning more about a customized social media measurement plan, email blake (at) socialsummercamp (dot) com or check out Social Summer Camp.