Hard work doesn’t guarantee success in social media. Few people care how many hours you work, how stressed you are, how much pressure you’re under, and how hard you worked to meet that deadline. Unless you can prove that the long hours, stress, and hard work is making a difference to their bottom line.
But proving Social Media ROI accurately takes time. You already are juggling day-to-day social media management tasks. So where do you find the time to gather performance data, analyze it, and build regular ROI reports that are fit to present to the board?
Proving and reporting Social Media ROI is the biggest challenge that 60% of social media managers face. And no one could relate to this more than Rhonda Giedt, former head of Marketing for a leading 3-D printing company.
As part of a rapidly growing company, she was under immense pressure to:
- Manage and grow its social media presence across multiple brands and social networks
- Create accurate, real-time performance and social media ROI reports in less time
- Become more fluid and agile with their social media strategy
- Reduce their tool stack
- Save time, money, and effort
Frustrated by the long hours spent trying to achieve the above, Rhonda decided enough was enough: She trialed six different social media management platforms (including Agorapulse, Sprout Social, Buffer, and Hootsuite) to find one that would help her and her Marketing team prove the value of their social media efforts.
Rhonda’s team’s key objective was to expand the company’s social media presence to support the rapid growth of the company
They chose Agorapulse as their preferred social media management platform.
It used to take Rhonda and her team more than two days a month and four tools to report on Social Media ROI.
So how did they cut their reporting tool stack from four tools down and reduce their reporting time by 95% and save over $2,600 every month by using Agorapulse? And how did they grow their social media presence in just six months?
Keep reading to find out.
Challenge: Finding the Right Social Media Management Platform That Met All Their Needs
The 3-D printing company was going through a rapid period of growth when it joined Agorapulse in January 2022. The company has over one million customers worldwide, headquarters in New York, manufacturing factories in three locations, and a network of verified partners from around the globe to manage.
Looking to scale further by growing its social media presence and its marketing team, Rhonda and her team needed a social media management platform that would allow them to:
- Use one tool to manage the profiles of five brands across all the major social networks, so that they could continue to grow their social media presence time-effectively.
- Prove social media ROI, so that they could justify the cost of hiring a dedicated social media manager, continue to grow the marketing team, and prove that the budget was being spent in the right way.
- Build approval workflow processes, so that all social media posts could be reviewed and approved before they were published to catch mistakes, improve accuracy, and ensure consistent brand messaging.
- Monitor campaign performance in real-time so that they could pivot quickly, experiment with new ideas, and adjust their social media marketing strategy, according to what was and wasn’t working.
Rhonda and the Marketing team knew exactly what they needed from a social media management platform.
The problem was, they couldn’t find a tool that could meet all of their needs.
They struggled to find an all-in-one, comprehensive tool that could:
- Allow them to view activity, publish content, and manage interactions across all five brand profiles and all the social media networks they wanted to utilize.
- Set up easy-to-manage approval workflows, at no additional cost.
- Accurately prove and report on social media ROI, without having to rely on other departments, multiple tools, and manually updated spreadsheets.
- Give them easy access to accurate performance data that could inform their social strategy and allow them to be truly agile.
The search ended when they found Agorapulse.
Solution: How Agorapulse Met (and Exceeded) the Printing Company’s Social Media Needs
After a two-week free trial, Rhonda and Agorapulse worked together to find the perfect solution to meet her and her team’s social media needs.
This package included:
- A built-in social media ROI reporting tool to reduce time spent manually building inaccurate reports
- Approval workflows, at no extra cost, to remove bottlenecks and get content out quickly
- A suite of publishing features to manage five brand profiles from one platform
- Automated UTM parameters and Social Listening functionality to help them monitor how campaigns are performing in real-time
Outcome: Quick Social Media ROI Reporting, Easy Approval Workflows, Next-Level Publishing Features & Automated UTM Parameters
Let’s unpack what Agorapulse did to help Rhonda and her team.
A built-in social media ROI reporting tool to reduce time spent manually building inaccurate reports
Before Agorapulse, social media ROI reporting would take Rhonda over two working days a month to complete. And it could often take an extra week for the bigger quarterly or annual reports.
She would spend hours collecting data from several different sources (like Google Analytics, social networks, spreadsheets, and other social management platforms).
Next, she would divide UTM parameters into individual categories and painstakingly copy and paste this data into multiple spreadsheets.
Then she’d manually calculate the ROI using calculators (Calculators!) and Excel formulas, and cobble together reports using a set of basic PowerPoint slides.
But despite all this time and effort, these reports didn’t accurately prove social media ROI. She would often spot inconsistencies with the data and would always face questions she couldn’t answer from the board.
With Agorapulse’s built-in social media ROI reporting tool, Rhonda can now directly plug into Google Analytics to create professional, custom reports that contain accurate data to fit the company’s needs.
Instead of completing a manual and time-consuming process each time she needs a report, she can now build, download and share comprehensive and reliable social media reports in minutes, not days.
No time is wasted creating duplicate spreadsheets, inaccurate graphs, or manually moving data from one place to another.
Approval workflows, at no extra cost, to remove bottlenecks and get content out quickly
Rhonda’s new social media manager was unfamiliar with the world of 3-D printing. So, Rhonda needed the ability to review and approve all her content before it went live.
Before Agorapulse, that approval process was done via email. But because Rhonda was inundated with hundreds of emails every day, this process often created bottlenecks which, in the world of social media where timing is everything, was frustrating.
Thanks to the Agorapulse approval workflows, Rhonda has been able to set up an automated approval process where the company’s social media manager can send content for approval with one quick, click of a button. She adds notes to provide Rhonda with context, and Rhonda gives feedback in a conversation thread within the platform, so neither needs to continuously check their emails to avoid missing a deadline.
Important, time-sensitive content is now turned around and published rapidly.
A suite of publishing features to manage five brand profiles from one platform
Because they handle the social profiles of five brands, before Agorapulse, Rhonda and her team were struggling to proactively manage a wide variety of campaigns, regularly post fresh content across different networks, and respond to audience engagement in good time.
Since they started using Agorapulse’s publishing features, they’ve been able to monitor all social activity, respond to all interactions, and schedule, publish and approve posts for all five brands, from just one platform.
- Engagements from all their social media networks automatically pull through into a central Social Inbox. From here, Rhonda and her team can reply to, organize, and assign messages, comments, and interactions for all five brand profiles.
- The Publishing Calendar allows them to schedule posts in advance and see, at a glance, what’s been scheduled. This allows them to spot gaps in content and keep track of the upcoming posts and campaigns across all five brands.
- The clean, simple dashboard gives them a bird’s eye view of all their social media activity, split by profile, making it easy to manage their five brands across multiple social networks from one, single place.
Automated UTM parameters and social listening functionality to help them monitor how campaigns are performing in real-time
Rhonda wanted to regularly review the social media marketing strategy to make sure that their social content was in-line with other marketing campaigns, and that it was bringing in results.
Before Agorapulse, with the lack of easily accessible data, they struggled to monitor their social activity performance accurately. That fact made it difficult to see what was working and what wasn’t.
Now, in addition to the direct integration with Google Analytics, to help Rhonda track performance accurately, they have access to:
- UTM parameters that are automatically added to any link that they share via Agorapulse so they can measure real conversions
- Social Listening features that allow them to assess how they’re performing against the competition in real-time
These capabilities have given her the confidence to change the social strategy if something isn’t working and become effortlessly agile.
What the 3-D Printing Company Got After 6 Months of Using Agorapulse
“It used to take a whole village to create a comprehensive report, now it takes a few clicks. It’s easy to prove the value of our social content and it puts my boss’ mind at ease that the strategy was right and the money is spent the right way.” (Rhonda Giedt, former Head of Marketing)
After just six months of using Agorapulse, the leading 3-D printing company is delighted with the results they’re seeing.
Because they now have access to real-time performance data and can see what is and isn’t working, they’re experimenting with new content and adjusting their social media strategy weekly.
As they can now send content for approval and receive feedback all from within the Agorapulse platform, they’re able to get content out in minutes, not hours.
Thanks to the direct integration with Google Analytics, rather than taking two days a month to report on social media ROI, it now only takes 20 minutes. This gives them 95% more time for other, important tasks. This integration is also allowing them to accurately track real conversions and sales, not just engagement, likes, and impressions. They can now see the specific amount of revenue they’ve generated through social media.
Rhonda and her Marketing team can now manage all their brands, and effortlessly keep up with messages, comments, and interactions all from within one platform. This has enabled them to cut their social media reporting tool stack down from four tools to just one and save over $15,000.
Try it for yourself! Contact one of our sales team for a free demo or sign up for a free trial.
