If you spend enough time online using social media to market your business, researching ways to market your business and absorbing advice in forums that help you market your business, chances are you’ve read plenty about the importance of measuring your social media success.

You may even have a list of tools to help you track what works, what doesn’t, and a whole bunch of other neat stuff. What’s more,  these tools are usually free. Great! Where do I sign up?

The thing is, if you’re like most small business owners, you already wear a multitude of hats. You cover everything from CEO, new business manager, account executive to receptionist so time is precious.

And if you’re working at the coal face, you probably also have a pretty good idea of what is working for you and what isn’t (check out this post here to see if what you’re doing online will really bring you more profits and sales).

To Measure or Not to Measure

Pouring over metrics that measure how influential you are, how active you’ve been and your style of communication is interesting.

Yes, it can help you keep your overall message in check, and in an ideal world you’d be tracking all of this information so you can target those you influence most.

But your business does not depend on it. It depends on you forging great relationships, following them up and converting them into happy clients.

So, as exciting as it is to view a display of coloured graphs (hopefully pointing in an upward angle) and knowing exactly how many followers you’ve gained that day, mostly these tools are just another route down the ‘social media time suck’.

How Do You Know What To Spend Your Time On And What Not To Bother With?

Of all the free metric tools available there are some that are no brainers. Well actually, one. That’s Google Analytics – an absolute must that tells you everything you need to know about your online marketing. Including which social networks and other online places send you the most visitors and what they do when they get there.

This information is key.

Measuring your social media success does not need to be complicated. If you’re spending time on a particular social network and from there people are finding your website, spending some time there (a few minutes is usually a good sign) and this continues on a regular basis, then you know you’re doing something right.

Keeping track of these basic but vital statistics will ensure you’re keep going in the right direction.

Tip: Set up your Google Analytics account so reports are emailed in PDF format each week or month via the ‘My Customisations’ settings. Hubspot gives excellent step-by-step directions for creating your customised report in this fab post.

I also recommend doing periodic reviews to improve that trend, either by yourself or with the help of an expert (I recommend Liz Lockard).

Beyond that, most of the social networking sites have their own built in analytics that provide everything a social networking small business owner needs to know. There’s…

Facebook Page Insights to tell you

• the demographics of your visitors and their location in the world
• what posts your fans enjoy and engage with most (so you can post more of the same)
• where people are liking your page from outside of the Facebook platform. It could be a website you’ve blogged for or via your Facebook plugins (so you know what’s working and whether to repeat the same techniques)

YouTube Analytics shows

• the total amount of views, and the demographic and location of those who have watched your video
• where people are watching from – YouTube, a mobile device or another website
• the individual audience retention of a video (that’s when people switch off and move on to something else. So if they’re losing interest before you get to the juicy part you know to get to that earlier.)

Twitter keeps it simple as always and measures the essentials like

• where people are watching from – YouTube, a mobile device or another website where people are watching from – YouTube, a mobile device or another website

The social media management tool, Hootsuite, goes into more detail, providing information on your top posts, demographics, clicks and even linking up with Google Analytics.

Apart from your Google Analytics, a few minutes reading these social media stats is all you need.

Then, use your intuition as you go about your day on social media – look for the grass roots signs that show you’re doing ok:

• Having conversations, y’know when you post something, someone else responds and you reply back. Not the one way kind.
• People are responding to your messages and sharing your updates with their connections
• They visit your blog, websites and event pages, and sign up for your newsletters
• They tell you how much they appreciate your help and like hearing from you

and most importantly

• You’ve got inquiries about your products and services

When you have all this, then you know it’s working without having to check a graph to see who you’ve influenced today.

Your Turn

How do you measure your social media success? Share with me in the comments below.

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on LizLockard.com