Measuring the ROI of brand awareness on social media
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2025 7:05 am
Establishing the ROI of social media is a complex task for any organization. But it becomes even more challenging if your organization primarily uses social media to improve aspects indirectly related to revenue, such as brand awareness.
Brand awareness is obviously crucial to your revenue; if people don't know you,ecuador phone number data they won't buy your products. In this regard, it's important to be able to quantify the contribution of social media.
There are two aspects of your brand that need to be differentiated:
Awareness : Increases the number of people who know your brand.
Perception : Helps change people's opinions of your brand.
The strategies for achieving these goals vary and are measured using different metrics. In this post, we'll discuss using social media to increase brand awareness and then explore three ways to measure that influence based on your level of social media experience:
Beginner : Influencing Brand Awareness Through Social Media Engagement
Intermediate : Increase your share of voice on social media to gain a competitive advantage
Advanced : Improving brand recall through social media advertising
#1 – Beginner: Influencing Brand Awareness Through Social Media Engagement
Why is this important?
Social engagement metrics such as followers, likes, comments, and shares are sometimes referred to as “vanity” metrics because they’re often used by social marketers to fuel their argument without proving the true impact social media has on their business. But these metrics are nonetheless the gold standard of social media, symbolizing the reach and scope of your brand. So, if your primary goal is to build brand awareness, these metrics are essential for measuring your success.
How to quantify it?
1. Establish benchmarks
To prove you're improving brand awareness through social media, you'll need a baseline to measure your progress. Choose a time period (weekly or monthly) and use a tool like Hootsuite Analytics to collect the following metrics:
Reach : The number of people who saw your posts
Followers : The number of new followers gained (including page likes)
Likes : The number of likes your posts received
Comments : the number of comments left on your posts
Shares : The number of shares and retweets of your content
Measure the evolution of these indicators over several weeks or months in order to establish reference points from the averages.
2. Apply your strategy
Once you have your benchmarks in place, it's time to implement a strategy that can improve your social media results (and therefore, increase your brand awareness and member engagement)—contests , social videos , Twitter conversations , or new visuals … whatever your approach, it's important to start from a premise that you can clearly compare to your benchmarks.
3. Measure the results
Calculate the number of likes, comments, and shares your posts received during the time period you selected when establishing your benchmarks. Do the same for reach per post and new followers. Compare this data to your benchmarks and, hopefully, you'll be able to prove that your strategy has increased awareness and engagement with your brand on social media.
#2 – Intermediate: Increase your share of voice on social media to gain a competitive advantage
Why is this important?
Your share of voice (SSoV) determines how much people talk about and with you on social media. It's expressed as a percentage of your industry's total share of voice. This data allows you to prove two things: that all your competitors are present on social media, and that you're more effective than them.
How to quantify it?
1. Calculate your brand mentions
List all mentions of your brand over a given period across all your social media channels. ( Hootsuite Analytics lets you get these numbers instantly instead of having to calculate them manually.)
Don't limit yourself to direct @mentions of your brand name. Include indirect mentions and any potential misspellings of your brand name. For example, we might track any mention of the name @Hootsuite as well as any indirect mentions of "hootsuite," "hoot suite," and so on.
Brand awareness is obviously crucial to your revenue; if people don't know you,ecuador phone number data they won't buy your products. In this regard, it's important to be able to quantify the contribution of social media.
There are two aspects of your brand that need to be differentiated:
Awareness : Increases the number of people who know your brand.
Perception : Helps change people's opinions of your brand.
The strategies for achieving these goals vary and are measured using different metrics. In this post, we'll discuss using social media to increase brand awareness and then explore three ways to measure that influence based on your level of social media experience:
Beginner : Influencing Brand Awareness Through Social Media Engagement
Intermediate : Increase your share of voice on social media to gain a competitive advantage
Advanced : Improving brand recall through social media advertising
#1 – Beginner: Influencing Brand Awareness Through Social Media Engagement
Why is this important?
Social engagement metrics such as followers, likes, comments, and shares are sometimes referred to as “vanity” metrics because they’re often used by social marketers to fuel their argument without proving the true impact social media has on their business. But these metrics are nonetheless the gold standard of social media, symbolizing the reach and scope of your brand. So, if your primary goal is to build brand awareness, these metrics are essential for measuring your success.
How to quantify it?
1. Establish benchmarks
To prove you're improving brand awareness through social media, you'll need a baseline to measure your progress. Choose a time period (weekly or monthly) and use a tool like Hootsuite Analytics to collect the following metrics:
Reach : The number of people who saw your posts
Followers : The number of new followers gained (including page likes)
Likes : The number of likes your posts received
Comments : the number of comments left on your posts
Shares : The number of shares and retweets of your content
Measure the evolution of these indicators over several weeks or months in order to establish reference points from the averages.
2. Apply your strategy
Once you have your benchmarks in place, it's time to implement a strategy that can improve your social media results (and therefore, increase your brand awareness and member engagement)—contests , social videos , Twitter conversations , or new visuals … whatever your approach, it's important to start from a premise that you can clearly compare to your benchmarks.
3. Measure the results
Calculate the number of likes, comments, and shares your posts received during the time period you selected when establishing your benchmarks. Do the same for reach per post and new followers. Compare this data to your benchmarks and, hopefully, you'll be able to prove that your strategy has increased awareness and engagement with your brand on social media.
#2 – Intermediate: Increase your share of voice on social media to gain a competitive advantage
Why is this important?
Your share of voice (SSoV) determines how much people talk about and with you on social media. It's expressed as a percentage of your industry's total share of voice. This data allows you to prove two things: that all your competitors are present on social media, and that you're more effective than them.
How to quantify it?
1. Calculate your brand mentions
List all mentions of your brand over a given period across all your social media channels. ( Hootsuite Analytics lets you get these numbers instantly instead of having to calculate them manually.)
Don't limit yourself to direct @mentions of your brand name. Include indirect mentions and any potential misspellings of your brand name. For example, we might track any mention of the name @Hootsuite as well as any indirect mentions of "hootsuite," "hoot suite," and so on.