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A Guide To
Creating Provable ROI
in Social Media
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The Value Question:
What is Social Media Worth?
Social media is great for
building trust and getting
attention from your target
audience. Once you have
their attention and trust,
its time to move them
away from the social media
platform and over to your
website where you can
call the shots and design
an awesome conversion
experience.
Michael Aagaard
Conversion Optimization Expert
If you have ever tweeted from your companys Twitter
handle, or posted an update to your Facebook, LinkedIn or
Google+ page, you are probably sick and tired of thinking
about this question, what is the return on investment
from that post?
With words like data-driven, metrics, ROI, measurement,
its clear that there is a lot of impetus to attribute revenue
and conversions directly to all marketing functionsnot
just social media.
Measuring many other marketing activities is more
established and straightforward. For example, if you ask,
How much return did we get for our investment in a paid
search marketing campaign? you can run a report on ad
spend and quickly calculate costs-per specic activities
important to you.
If email marketing comes under question, you can list of
a number of ways to quantify its value. You can correlate
email open/click activity with revenue or engagement,
or compare the value of a customer who is included in an
email campaign versus one who isnt.
When the question comes to social media, the answeras
you are awaretends to get fuzzy.
Of course there are times when updates to social media
channels lead directly to conversions but there are also
timesperhaps many timeswhen social media updates
lead to less monetizable events. Whats the value of a like
on LinkedIn? A retweet on Twitter? A share on Facebook?
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What we do know is that social media is (and for the
foreseeable future, will be) an integral part of marketing.
Common sense says its a no brainerinvesting in
expanding your businesss ecosystem through social just
makes sense because your customers, your prospective
customers, and your competitors are on social media.
Some say measure conversions. Others say measure net
promoter score, and there are those that say followers
are the main metric to optimize. Others are just on the
bandwagon, investing time and money in social media
because they know its important but cant say how
efective it is. A 2014 study by Social Media Examiner
reported that 87% of marketers surveyed dont know how
to measure their return on investment from social media.
Whats clear is that there is not a silver bullet solution to
calculate return on investment from social media. This can
cause skepticism. In such a data-driven era of marketing,
managers, and CEOs want clarity and quantitative proof
of the ROI of social media in order to make decisions.
This guide will walk you through one of the practices you
can do as a social media manager or marketer to collect
more quantitative feedback on your investment in social
media, increase how often your content gets shared, and
how often visitors from social media turn into customers
for your business. This practice is optimization.
No business is saying, Oh, no I wont get on [insert popular social network here]
because that wouldnt help achieve my business goals.
What they are saying is what impact does Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn,
Pinterest have for me and how do I prove it? Opinions are mixed on this question.
In August 2013, The CMO Survey reported that 66% of respondents said
their companies are putting more pressure on measuring social ROI.
The problem: the majority of marketers do not know how.
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Enter Experience Optimization
Experience optimization means proactively bringing data to the core of your
business to create high performing user experiences that increase conversions,
engagement, and revenue. Experimentation and testing are at the core of
experience optimization. The goal is to apply these practices to social media
strategy to quantify the value of social media and uncover helpful answers about
where you should spend more or less time and resource.
By asking specic questions about individual channels,
you can reach conclusions about larger questions like:
How much does social media impact my business?
How does social media impact consumer spending and decision making?
What are key drivers of success on social media?
How much money and time should I be investing in social media?
MARKETI NG STRATEGY
OPTIMIZATION
EXPERIENCE
is an
ESSENTIAL PART
of any
RUN
TESTS
HYPOTHESIZE
IMPROVEMENTS
DETERMINE
OPTIMIZATION
POINTS
DEFINE
GOALS
CREATE
VARIATIONS
MEASURE
RESULTS
The experience optimization loop
helps break the looming question,
what is the value of social media?
into smaller, more measurable parts.
Which social channel does my
audience spend the most time on?
What kind of content are they
most compelled to share?
What time of day are they most
likely to interact on diferent
channels?
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10 Experiments
That Can Help You
Increase Value From
Social Media
Here are 10 diferent experiment ideas and
the questions theyll help you answer about
your social media investment.
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The physical location of a button is a factor in a visitors decision to share.
Think about placement on the page as well as which pages have options to share.
These type of tests can help you determine
where on the page people are most likely to
click, as well as the places on your site that stir
emotiona main motivating factor in sharing.
On article pages, test placing share buttons at
the end of the article vs. the beginning vs. both
places.
MEASURE SUCCESS
Track which variations increase engagement on share buttons.
CNN uses a sticky share bar that
scrolls with you down the page.
Sephora has share buttons on the product
pages. Are people more likely to share
something after theyve decided to buy it or
during decision making?
Mashable has a share header and
only shows Facebook and Twitter
with an option to expand.
01 Test location of share buttons
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Trafc generation is part of the value social media adds to your business. Test when you post to your various
social channels to nd peak times of the day and days of the week for click throughs.
There is no consensus in the world
of social media about the time of day
or day of the week a post will reach
maximum exposure. Your audience
is unique compared to another brand
so you should test it.
Dan Zarella, social media scientist
of Hubspot, did a study that found
afternoon Tweets had higher click-
through-rates. Another study by Dan
Zarella found that the best time to
Tweet for retweets is at 5pm.
Many social media measurement
softwares like Sprout Social and
Bufer will track timing for you. If you
dont use one, then you can use unique
URLs based on the time of day. Track
which unique URL generated the most
trafc in your site analytics.
MEASURE SUCCESS
Measure which posts generate the most trafc.
02 Experiment with the time you publish
to diferent channels
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Try diferent ofers incentivizing
people to share
A study found that recommendationsespecially shared onlineare more inuential on a persons
buying decision than brand or price. Test the way
you incentivize people to share or review your product or service.
When thinking of incentives, put yourself
in your customers shoes. If you ask people
to share or write a recommendation ask,
Whats in it for me?
Tip: Try pre-populating a form with
share text. People may need a nudge
or inspiration to decide what to write.
MEASURE SUCCESS
Track which ofers generate the most shares. You can ofer diferent
referral codes for incentives and measure which codes are used most.
In email, Lyft ofers a credit for
referring friends to sign up on
diferent social networks.
Warby Parker strongly urges sharing
on its order conrmation pages.
03
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Trafc coming from diferent channels to your website may not all be responsive to the same call to
action. Test the ask you make of people based on which social channel they came from. This can help
you learn about the actions that visitors from diferent social channels are most likely to take.
Maybe trafc from LinkedIn is more likely to sign up for a service, trafc from Twitter might be more
prone to share an article, and visitors from Facebook are inclined to like a page?
Test showing diferent call to actions on trafc from diferent referral sources.
has found that its best to show diferent share
buttons on articles based on the type of content and how the
visitor reached the site. This is a great test to run if a large
percentage of your trafc comes from social.
LIKE OUR PAGE
SHARE AN ARTICLE
MAKE A PURCHASE
SUBSCRIBE FOR UPDATES
SIGN UP FOR A SERVICE
MEASURE SUCCESS
Track which call to action converts best for each segment of social trafc
CALL TO ACTION
YOUR LANDING PAGE
04 Experiment with personalized
calls to action on landing pages
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Language and length are two factors that go into crafting a call to action in a social post. Testing how
you position an action is a way to gauge what your audience is interested in.
Direct appeals in social media updates may not lead
to conversions. Your audience might engage more
with informational posts.
MEASURE SUCCESS
Run a controlled campaign for a few weeks on each of your main channels
and track how usage of direct CTAs vs. absence of CTAs impacts engagement.
On Facebook, Target doesnt directly tell
people to buy the product, but uses other
promotional language to engage people to
click the link.
On LinkedIn, Salesforce.com shares information
without a direct appeal to click or read the article.
KISSmetrics tells people directly to learn more.
The arrows to the link add emphasis on the link.
05 Test calls to action in social updates
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Share buttons come in all shapes and sizes these days. Button designs that used to be homogenous
across the web are becoming highly customized. Simply testing what your buttons look like can lead
to a signicant increase in shares.
There are many questions to test on a share
button:
Do you include a share counter?
Do you include who shared it?
Depending on what type of share it is, knowing
who else shared it could be a very compelling
reason to buy or share. For e-commerce sites,
seeing who bought an item could be more
compelling than a star rating.
Test a single share buttons versus multi-site share buttons.
MEASURE SUCCESS
Which button design generates the most clicks. Also keep track of which channel is most popular.
If you see shares to one channel outshine the rest then you can focus more time and efort there.
Forbes has a sticky share
icon that expands when
you hover over it.
Veggietales found that adding
counters to the share buttons on
their homepage increased revenue
per visitor by 36.8%.
On their blog, Marketo shows
aggregate shares with a heart
symbol.
06 Test the design of your share buttons
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Reducing the steps and time necessary to login or signup to your service can increase engagement and
usage. Any way to reduce friction can be positive for your company. Social login is one way do this. Try
using social login on your website to see if it increases sign up rate or product usage.
Apply insights from other tests to determine which
social network your customers or users spend most
time on and test ofering that as a login method.
If you already have social login, test the size and
position of the button relative to the form. Try
assuring people that you wont post to their feed if
they sign up.
MEASURE SUCCESS
Track sign up conversions or logins with and without the social login.
Since a Google account
is required to use the
product, KISSmetrics
uses Google sign in.
Goodreads ofers
many diferent social
logins in addition to a
signup form.
Test one-click sign up
with social media buttons
07
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YOUR LANDING PAGE YOUR LANDING PAGE
This Product
is Fast!
This Product
is Fast!
GET IT NOW! GET IT NOW!
Using images in social posts has the power to signicantly increase engagement. Twitter states
that they see 2x engagement on posts with images. Test whether a specic type of image create
more engagement over another.
Instead of specic images, test out the impact of diferent image types, like images with people
versus no people. Models versus just product. Test the impact diferent images have on diferent
social networks. What drives shares and likes on Facebook may not perform as well on LinkedIn.
08
MEASURE SUCCESS
Come up with a way to categorize the types of images you post and track how
the diferent image categories impact your key metrics.
Experiment with the types
of images you share
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Giving readers recommended articles to read next is a proven way to increase pageviews on
your content. The exact design and positioning of the articles is something you can test.
TechCrunch
has thumbnails at
the end of articles
recommending
content.
Test adding social share numbers next to recommended articles. If the articles with the highest
number of shares are the most clicked in the recommended content module, then you have
proof on the return value of social media. Upworthy tested the design of the module they use to
recommend content and found a variation that increased social shares by 27%.
MEASURE SUCCESS
Track clicks on recommended articles with social proof support.
Forbes
recommends
content receiving
high page views or
trending on social
networks on its top
navigation.
Test how you position
recommended content
09
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was difcult to nd additional content after landing
on a particular video or graphic. Our users wanted
to dig deeper, but there was no obvious way to get to a
second piece of content, says Peter. Peters goal was
to increase sitewide engagement, while maintaining
the share-optimized user experience.
Hypothesis
Peter believed that adding a recommended content
module would decrease the number of social shares
for each article on average. We had already done a lot
of testing and found that when we added distractions,
user sharing went down, Peter said. Its the classic
paradox of choice concept. The team decided to
run a series of A/B tests to nd a variation of a
recommended content module that would maximize
sharing and clicks on new content.
1
st
Round of Test Variations
The original article page had no recommended
content links, so they started from scratch in terms
of wireframes and design.
First, the team experimented with placement of the
recommended content box on the page. Continue to
the next page to see the variations they tested.
Recommended Content Meets Social
Sharing: An Example From Upworthy
In the earliest days of Upworthy, our goal was to nd
people on social media and grab their attention and
then get them to share back out to social media as
well, says Peter Koechley, co-founder of Upworthy.
We wanted to optimize that loop. As Upworthys
audience grew, the team realized that the desired
loop was not so tight. Engagement was growing and
people were spending more time on the sitebut it
Were maybe as good as a coin-ip at
guessing whats going to work best for
our users. We rely on testing to just
make better decisions. People are really
fascinating and interestingand weird!
Its really hard to guess their behaviors
accurately.
Peter Koechley
Co-founder, Upworthy

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2
nd
Round of Test Variations
Then they honed in on design trying a number of diferent aesthetics and wording for the recommended content.
Was it Watch these next, Some of our best, orBest of Upworthy that attracted more clicks and shares?
They tested recommended
content above the article.
They tested diferent
color treatments.
They tried it to the
left of the article.
WINNER
The box to the right of the article
titled Best of Upworthy increased
social shares on recommended
content by 28%! We want people on our site to really enjoy a piece of
content and share it in huge numbers. Part of this
is about curation great content, but its also about
taking time to optimize every part of the experience
for maximum shareability and satisfaction.
Peter Koechley
Co-founder, Upworthy

Click to view the full story of

Upworthys tests.
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Experiment with targeting
for paid social promotions
Paid updates can be a very efective way to reach new audiences, but which audiences perform
best for your brand and what kind of promotion you do is something to experiment with. Test
promoting updates to diferent audience segments.
When testing paid social placements the rst step is deciding on your goal. Is your goal likes/follows on
your company page or shares on a high value piece of content? Your goal will help you determine the type of
advertising campaign to run. Then, its all about picking your audience.
10
Tip: Make sure your audience
experimentation is controlled. Change one
lter at a time to see if/how that diference in
audience impacts success of your campaign.
Tip: Beyond targeting, test diferent ad
variations (images and ad text) as well. On
social platforms, click through rate can be
heavily inuenced by images. Test diferent/
contrasting colors, people vs. products, male
vs. female image.
MEASURE SUCCESS
Keep track of which audience segments turn into conversions.
This is what
audience selection
looks like on
LinkedIn. You can
see how wide your
net is as you add
more specic lters.
Heres an example
of a promoted
Tweet from
Lincoln Motor
Company that is
targeted to people
searching for
Audi.
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So Where do I Start?
Start with one of these ideas we covered:
01. Test location of share buttons
02. Experiment with the time you publish to diferent channels
03. Try diferent ofers incentivizing people to share
04. Experiment with personalized calls to action on landing pages
05. Test calls to action in social updates
06. Experiment with the design of your share buttons
07. Test one-click sign up with social media buttons
08. Experiment on the types of images you share
09. Test how you position recommend content
10. Experiment with targeting for paid social promotions
If one of them hasnt jumped out at you to run immediately already, then start by dening a goal
you are trying to achieve with social media. How do you dene goals? If nothing is jumping out
at you, then ask, why do we have [Insert popular social media site]? What will happen if we stop
posting there? Work backwards from there.
Do ex your creativity muscles. Continue to brainstorm brilliant, never-before-seen ways to
stand out through the cacophony of an average persons social feed. And denitely do make it a
priority to measure the impact of your work on metrics that really matter for your business so
you can prove the value to your boss or bosss boss.
Then start testing!
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About this Guide
10 Experiment Ideas to Help Increase Value from Social Media
More Resources
Written by:
Cara Harshman
Content Marketing Specialist
@CaraHarshman
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