[LukeCBiz]

Been trying to wrap my head around what I have been experiencing, and obviously people have different levels to gauge a successful test. But I just wanted to see what people in general look at for a successful test running on social media like FB and PoF. How many clicks, converts, etc. Been seeing lots of interesting methods.

[Chuck Hamrick]

Luke, this is a tough one as you can't always quantify the success with social campaigns through clicks and sales. Since a lot of it can get shared the tracking won't track across 2nd accounts or moving a Facebook post to a Twitter post. You can test with something unique to the campaign like a promotional code that is tied to the cart. I know affiliates using that method and worrying about tracking breakage but its dependent on the cart.

[CFW]

Chuck's right about not being able to track everything. You could use a promo code to track or a landing page with a unique URL.

As far as measuring if it was successful, I use:
1) revenue
2) email/newsletter signups
2) visitors to your website
3) signups to your social media account

Pick any one, and compare your conversion rate to your other channels.

[AaronSmick]

Kind of along the lines of what Chuck was saying, a huge part of the role of social media in your efforts can't be quantified in one metric. Visitors may be looking at your social media pages just to get a sense of your reputation- are people saying positive things about this company/product on these forums, is a customer support person responding to problems in a timely fashion, etc.

Simply making sure that any social presence you have reflects positive on what you're trying to offer doesn't have a metric assigned to it, but it just as important as tracking clicks/conversions.