5 Ways to Tell if Social Media is Working for Your Brand

In the competitive world of the beauty business, beauty brands want to make sure that their social media campaigns are working for them. While some brands expect a direct increase in sales, this increase is sometimes one of the last ways to tell if a social media campaign is working. So until your beauty brand does start to see an increase in sales, how can you measure that your social media campaign is even doing its job?

Here’s how:

New fans – Keep in mind that the primary purpose of having a fan page on Facebook or Twitter is to build an online community for your beauty brand. Think of your brand’s Facebook page as an online hub for customer service, brand awareness and direct fan engagement. Tracking an increase in new fans over a period of time is a great indicator that people want to be involved in your online community. If you are posting relevant and useful content, responding to fan questions/concerns and actively engaging fans with contest, trivia and more – you should always be seeing a steady increase in fans.

More visitors – Similarly to seeing an increase in new fans over time, an increase in visitor traffic to a beauty brand’s website and/or blog is a great indicator that existing customers or even potential customers are interested in your brand. What to do if you start seeing a lull in web traffic instead of growth? Make sure that you are still driving traffic from all of your social media platforms on a consistent basis. While you should always focus of posting relevant content to build your community, you always want to be linking social media posts back to your websites.

Comments and shares – A simple ratio suggests that an increase in fan engagement usually begins after an increase in fans. While fan engagement may naturally increase due to an increase in page fans, you want to also make sure that you are posting content that is engagement-worthy! Are you hosting contests and giveaways? Are you increasing buzz about your beauty brand by offering free samples? Are you asking questions and are you genuinely interested in your community feedback? Continue experimenting with different types of engagement until you get a feel for what your community wants and is looking for from your brand.

Building new relationships – Whether you are building relationships with the beauty bloggers reviewing your brand or other beauty brands in a similar niche as yours, you’ll know your are building your online community right if you are getting to know more people than you did before. Online communities should always be open to RTs, positive commenting and engaging with other beauty brands because it does less harm than good. It doesn’t mean you are promoting another brand, it simply means that you are establishing your own part in an even bigger online beauty community!

Sales – Ah yes, an increase in sales. While it’s hard to measure a direct increase in sales from social media unless there’s a specific campaign (specifying to mention Facebook, Twitter etc.), you will also want to know if social media, on its own, can be responsible for an increase in sales. If you remain consistent in efforts to build a lively and knowledgeable online community, you’ll increase the probability that a potential customer will select your beauty brand by simply being involved and being aware of your brand by being in the online community you’ve worked so hard to build. Remember, it often takes 7 points of contact before a customer is ready to buy. So increase the frequency by staying active on all social media channels.

Naturally, this has caught the attention of marketers worldwide and has once again shifted the mindset of social media marketing. Intermingling with personal boards of mothers keeping crafting or dinner ideas organized are businesses and brands maximizing their marketing opportunities on Pinterest. Since Pinterest is based on the forwarding of visual images, keywords begin to play a different part in order for a product, blog or business to successfully stand out.

According to 2012 statistics, around 68% of all Pinterest users are women. Knowing that women are a majority of Pinterest users, should say something to marketers on how to better attract users to their pins. For example, even men’s products can be pinned by a high number of Pinterest users if the wording attached to a pin is enticing to a female user as well.

80% of all pins are also re-pins, which speaks volumes of the amount of content that is originally pinned versus content that is being forwarded by users. Images inking back to your website is what makes Pinterest so useful for marketers. To make sure your business, blog or product is getting the most out of Pinterest, always make sure to label your pictures with company names, names of products or websites so that pictures (pins) will always link back to your brand.

Hashtags are equally important when it comes to helping users find your pins. Hashtags (#fashion or #beauty for example) can maximize the opportunity for your pin to be found by hundreds of users who may not be following your boards

While Facebook gains new fans with content shares and friend endorsements (every like is seen by an average of 130 Facebook fans), Pinterest allows users to bring in new followers that might not have found your website otherwise. For example, if you were a small hardware store owner, pinning and linking back pictures of new lawnmowers in the summertime might only bring your website partial traffic. Whereas if the store owner got creative and started pinning pictures of inspirational quotes about hard work, articles about home repair or BBQ recipe ideas, the store owner is them maximizing his opportunities to get a wide range of potential new customers. On Pinterest, diversity of boards is always better.

Just like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest has peak times when users are researched to be more active. Pinterest users are generally more active during the “coffee hours” between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., the lunch hour between noon and 1 p.m. and the hours before and during dinner, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

With a little creativity, using relevant keywords and hashtags and finding a way to always link back to your brand, Pinterest can become a great asset for web traffic and a powerful social media marketing tool for any brand or organization.