GUIDE

How to Measure
the ROI of Your
Social Media
A step-by-step guide on measuring
the combined return on investment
of paid and organic social content
Contents
The importance of defensible social ROI metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Integrating paid and organic strategies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Redefining social marketing ROI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

What ROI metrics matter for your brand?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Tracking and reporting on social marketing ROI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

1. Measure conversion uplift.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2. Use Hootsuite Impact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3. Use link tracking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

4. Track social share of voice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

5. Use pixel tracking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

6. Build graphical reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

How Hootsuite can help. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

The importance of defensible social ROI metrics

Running a successful social media strategy can be expensive and time-
consuming. More than ever, social marketers must be able to measure and prove
the return on investment (ROI) of both their organic and paid social media efforts.

ROI metrics help marketers decide how to effectively allocate resources. More
importantly, they help demonstrate the impact of social media on broader
marketing goals and overall business outcomes.

2 ROI of Social Ads Guide

Without solid, defensible ROI metrics, social marketers struggle to retain
and grow their budgets and their teams.

Since many senior executives don’t have a marketing background—let alone

expertise in social media—they can be quick to cut budgets when economic
conditions change. Think back to the beginning of the pandemic—brands
without solid ROI metrics cut social advertising budgets, whereas brands with
defensible metrics across organic and paid social media maintained (or even
increased) their budgets and created opportunities to stay connected to
customers—and find new ones.

This guide demonstrates how progressive social marketers are redefining ROI
to better reflect the holistic impact of organic and paid social media strategies.
It also describes the potential efficiencies that can be gained by integrating
those strategies to increase ROI, and recommends ways to measure the
impact of organic and paid social along the buyer journey.

Let’s get started.

only 3%
of board members have
70%
of CMOs are unable to
a marketing background1 quantitatively show the ROI
of their social media spend2

3 ROI of Social Ads Guide

Integrating paid and organic strategies
Organic and paid social media play two different—but equally important—roles
in your social media strategy.

Despite changes in social media algorithms that limit the reach of organic
content, developments in conversational marketing and social messaging
have revitalized organic social media. Today it plays a crucial role in deepening
relationships with existing followers, moving prospects along the buyer journey,
and building and retaining customer loyalty. It also serves as an important
channel for employee advocacy and customer marketing programs.

Paid social media complements organic strategies to reach new audiences,

increase brand awareness, and help with top-of-funnel lead generation.

In short, you can’t focus on organic or paid alone.

In our most recent Social Trends survey of over 18,000 social media professionals,
57.2% claim to have somewhat integrated organic and paid social strategies.3
And for good reason—one-third of social marketers said integrating organic
and paid strategies improved their ability to measure and prove ROI.4

That’s because organic and paid can work in tandem to drive efficiency.
For example, the greater your organic reach, the more you can amplify your
paid efforts.5 By testing and optimizing organic content, you can ensure
you’re investing in your highest-performing content with your paid campaigns.
Plus, new followers gained from paid campaigns can be reached more
efficiently with organic content and nurtured along the buyer journey.

57.2%
of social media professionals have
somewhat integrated their paid
and organic social strategies.6

4 ROI of Social Ads Guide

Redefining social marketing ROI
Measuring ROI is straightforward in theory. First, you calculate the revenue
your efforts generated; then you divide it by the cost of your investment in
resources (tools and people’s time) and social advertising spend.

Revenue
Closed revenue that was originated or influenced by social marketing.

+ +
Tools Time Ad Spend
Social listening, social Social media managers, Facebook, Instagram,
media management, performance marketers, content Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
reporting tools, etc. creators (graphic designers,
video editors, copywriters), etc.

This ROI methodology is technically correct. But what metric tracks the dollar
value of a single social media post? Social media is ever-present throughout
the buyer journey, so there is more than one metric to measure.

Each step in the buyer journey will have different success metrics.
The key is to understand that social marketing ROI is not a single metric.
Instead, it can be measured by tracking smaller actions, or “micro actions,”
that move customers through different stages of their buying journey before
they take the final action, or “macro action” that your organization wants to
drive. This action could be a purchase, a reservation, a vote, or any number
of other organizational goals.

Social Marketing ROI = Micro and macro actions across

organic and paid channels that
drive business goals

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 People Insights
Organic +
Social Ads
Boosted
Business Goals > Campaign Objectives

Impressions,
Brand Awareness Social Ads
reach

Page/profile likes, Post engagement: likes,

Interest
link clicks to website comments & shares

Leads (MQL’s) Evaluation Demos & trials (SQL’s)

Purchase
Add to cart, initiate checkout, Store visits &
online purchase in store purchase

For example, a prospect might see your social media content and take a
micro action to complete a form and become a marketing-qualified lead
(MQL). Between the time they become an MQL until they progress to
become a sales-qualified lead (SQL), they may have other interactions on
social media. For example, they might comment on a Facebook post or
ask a question via Facebook Messenger.

Although you can’t directly tie each micro action to the macro action,
every touchpoint is an influencing moment in the buyer journey and
provides clues as to whether your social marketing is on the right track.

6 ROI of Social Ads Guide

What ROI metrics matter for your brand?
To decipher the ROI metrics that best reflect the actions taken along your buyer
journey you must first identify your goal (e.g., visit a store, enter a competition,
increase website visits, etc.). Next, consider the buyer’s journey and decide what
actions along the way will contribute to the buyer taking action to reach your
end goal. Finally, put tracking in place for these actions.

Example:

Goal Strategy Metrics

Increase website visits Run a time-limited Clicks to webiste: click-through

and online sales special rate and cost per click

Add to carts and checkouts

initiated

Number of purchases and

value of each purchase

In this bottom-of-the-funnel example, it’s important to note that the focus is on

quality—not just quantity—of actions taken. The goal is to increase website visits.
However, purchasing intent matters. Fewer visitors with higher purchasing intent
are better than more visitors with lower intent.

Understanding intent
Some metrics track passive actions that are not that useful when calculating ROI.
For example, metrics that show impressions, reach, and short video views really
only tell you that someone scrolled past your post in their newsfeed.

This doesn’t mean they are particularly interested in your post. However, when
a user goes out of their way to take an action like visiting your website or
commenting on a Facebook post, it demonstrates a higher purchasing intent.

7 ROI of Social Ads Guide

Tracking and reporting on social marketing ROI
We’ve covered the importance of redefining social marketing ROI to take a holistic
view of organic and paid social media working together. Now let’s dive into some
of the best ways to track and report on the micro actions that influence business
outcomes and contribute to ROI.

Social marketers who have completely integrated paid

and organic social media efforts are extremely confident
in calculating the overall return on investment of their
holistic social media program.

1. Measure conversion uplift

Conversion uplift is a simple but effective way to measure how social media
campaigns drive incremental sales and conversions. In other words, it measures
the sales and conversions that you wouldn’t have otherwise received via other
marketing or sales channels.

To calculate conversion uplift, measure your important metrics (e.g., form

fills, sales, website visits) for a specific period of time when no social media
campaigns are running and establish a baseline.

Make sure other marketing campaigns and sales activity is operating business-
as-usual during this time. Next, start your organic and paid campaigns and
measure the uplift compared to the baseline.

If you regularly run social campaigns and can’t calculate a baseline, you could
try pausing social media campaigns for a period of time and calculate the
decrease in sales and conversions to come to the same conclusion.

8 ROI of Social Ads Guide

2. Use Hootsuite Impact
Simplify ROI with a tool like Hootsuite Impact where you can track and analyze your
social marketing results, prove the business value of your social campaigns, and
optimize the performance of your organic and paid social media efforts. You can also
set up custom metrics to monitor what’s most important to your business.

Hootsuite Impact measures organic and paid content metrics for Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, and LinkedIn, and organic content metrics on Pinterest and YouTube. Website
traffic can also be measured using Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics.

3. Use link tracking

There are several ways to track website traffic from social media, including
link shorteners, Google Analytics, and Adobe Analytics.

A link shortener allows you to put a short link in your social media posts instead of a
long landing page link. Link shortener providers usually allow you to see how many
clicks passed to your website from each shortened link. Therefore, if you use a specific
shortened link for each traffic source, you can decipher where the traffic came from.

9 ROI of Social Ads Guide

 Shortened links can be created directly within Hootsuite. You can also measure
the traffic source via your website server using common website analytics tools
like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics.

With website analytics tools, you must generate Urchin Tracking Module (UTM)
parameters. UTM parameters are tags that you add to a URL that contain additional
pieces of information. When someone clicks on a URL with UTM parameters, those
tags are sent back to Google Analytics for tracking. For example, www.hootsuite.
com?utm_source=Facebook will still take you to www.hootsuite.com but the UTM
code will allow Google Analytics to capture Facebook as the referral source.

Popular UTM Tags

■ 
utm_campaign: The name of the ■ 
utm_content: Use this where
overall campaign you’re running across additional information about the
multiple channels promotional content would be
valuable. (e.g., if you’re performing
■ 
utm_medium: The channel through
A/B testing, use this to show a link
which this particular link is distributed
that goes to version A or version B
(e.g., email, paid ads, etc.)
■ utm_term: If you’re using paid ads,
■ 
utm_source: One level deeper than
use this to differentiate which search
medium. If it’s an ad, is it on Google,
term the ad is targeting
Facebook, or Instagram?

10 ROI of Social Ads Guide

 4. Track social share of voice
Social share of voice (SSoV) measures how many people are mentioning your
brand on social media compared to your competitors. Mentions can be either
direct (e.g., “@Hootsuite”) or indirect (e.g., “hootsuite”)

SSoV is, essentially, competitive analysis: how visible—and, therefore,

relevant—is your brand in the market? To track SSoV:
1. Measure every mention your brand receives—direct and indirect—
across your social networks.
2. Measure your competitors’ mentions during the same reporting period.
3. Add your mentions and those of your competitors to get the total
industry mentions.
4. Divide your brand mentions by the grand total and multiply by 100
to get your SSoV percentage.

Share of Voice

Competitor 4 My Company
20% 43%

Competitor 3
10%

Competitor 2 Competitor 1
15% 12%

11 ROI of Social Ads Guide

 5. Use pixel tracking
Ad platforms provide tracking pixels free of charge. Examples include Facebook Pixel,
Twitter Pixel, and LinkedIn Insight Tag.

The tracking pixels are typically snippets of javascript that can be added to the header
of every page on your website. You don’t need to be a coder to install it though—most
websites have a plugin to handle pixel installation.

Facebook Pixel
Code Example

6. Build graphical reports

Social media platforms are awash with data. The problem is that data is useless if you
don’t have the analytical capabilities to make sense of it. Third-party reporting tools like
Hootsuite Analytics can help you bring your data to life so you can tell relatable stories
about your social media activity.

Try to make your reports as visual as possible—especially if you’re presenting results to

uninformed audiences. Your executive team will be impressed with the context you add
to the data. Use line graphs, bar charts, and pie charts liberally to showcase key figures
and add anecdotes or hypotheses as to why the data is trending a particular way.

12 ROI of Social Ads Guide

 How Hootsuite can help
Social media changes fast and your content needs to keep up. But when
your organic and paid strategies are fragmented, inefficiency impacts the
ROI of social marketing as a whole.

With Hootsuite Social Advertising, you can say goodbye to siloed

strategies and manage all your paid content alongside your organic
posts, see what’s working and what’s not, and move fast to make the
most of new opportunities.

Simplify workflows to get more done

Say goodbye to jumping between native platforms. Plan and publish
ads on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn directly from the Hootsuite
dashboard to streamline your process, launch ads faster, and see all your
paid efforts in one place.

Make the most of your marketing resources

Manage ad budgets across platforms, redistribute spending, and optimize
campaigns so that you’re constantly playing to your strengths. With all your
ads in one place, you can see results as you go and make quick changes to
get the most out of your ad spend.

See the full picture of your campaigns

See which tactics are working across channels with best-in-class analytics
features and in-depth reports. Analyze the performance of your ads
alongside your organic content and create tailored, multi-channel
strategies informed by big-picture data.

13 ROI of Social Ads Guide

 Get analytics capabilities like nowhere else

Whether it’s for individual ads or more complex campaigns, for

ads created natively or within Hootsuite, and for engagement or
performance metrics, Hootsuite Social Advertising’s powerful analytics
show you all the metrics that matter for all your paid and organic social
content across channels like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

See what you need to see—when you need to see it

Filter results by engagement to see reactions, comments, and shares.
Or by audience fields to see geography, gender, and age. Or by date
range to see results per day or time period. Create focused reports
that show you everything you need to see—and nothing more.

Take your customers on a better journey

Even the best ads won’t get the best results if they don’t work
seamlessly with your other content. Get organic and paid to work
together at every stage of the customer journey—from brand
awareness and consideration to conversion and advocacy—to
engage when it matters most.

Resources
Webinar: How to Measure the ROI of Your Social Advertising

Blog: Organic vs. Paid Social Media: How to Integrate Both into
Your Strategy

Tools: Social ROI Calculator

Blog: How to Prove and Improve Social Media ROI

14 ROI of Social Ads Guide

 Endnotes
1 McKinsey & Co. Marketing’s moment is now: The C-suite partnership
to deliver on growth.
2 The CMO Survey. Highlights and Trends.
3 Hootsuite Social Trends 2022 Survey Reference TBC—Trends not
yet published
4 Hootsuite Social Trends 2022 Survey Reference TBC—Trends not
yet published
5 LinkedIn. Your Organic + Paid Playbook.
6 Hootsuite Social Trends 2022 Survey Reference TBC—Trends not
yet published

15 ROI of Social Ads Guide

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