Of more than 10.7 million social media posts studied by Agorapulse—excluding Instagram, which doesn’t allow for links—32% contained a link back to a website. Of those nearly 3.4 million links, only 1.9% contained any tracking parameters. While marketers could know who was visiting sites, what those visitors’ intentions were and which of them was most likely to buy a product, they’re forfeiting the opportunity for 98.1% of all links they send out to social media.
While Agorapulse’s Ernoult said it’s impossible to track everything on social media, he and his company see room for improvement. Rhonda Geidt, who served as head of marketing for b-to-b manufacturer and Agorapulse partner Shapeways until last year, saw revenue increase 12% from a year earlier from increased social media marketing and credits tracking for the change. She was not only able to see which linked posts worked and which didn’t, but could show results directly to her company’s CEO.
“What we bring to this is basically moving from zero to one: Moving from ‘nothing is tracked’ to at least we can track what is trackable,” Ernoult said, noting that Agorapulse automates link tracking for links on social media posts and in bios. Meanwhile, advances in AI could provide an opportunity to detect patterns like website purchases immediately following social media link posts. “By pattern matching, you aren’t able to resolve the entire ‘dark social equation’ because you can’t resolve the whole thing, but you can at least start building visibility into it.”
Next steps
Agorapulse launched its social media ROI service a year ago amid a rosier economic climate. Even then, however, it considered its findings and surveyed 300 social media marketers. They found that 98% thought it was somewhat or extremely important to measure the business impact of social media—though just 35% are measuring it today. Why? “Tools too complex/expensive.” “Lack of buy-in.” “Time constraints.”
According to HubSpot Blog’s 2022 Marketing Industry Trends Report surveying 1,000 global marketers, social media is the top channel for both business-to-business (49%) and business-to-consumer marketers (45%). While 72% of marketing spending goes to digital channels, just 11.3% is funneled toward social media. Between that and lack of social media measurement, 88% of social marketers told Agorapulse they feel that their career progression is negatively impacted. Another 77% feel they aren’t an important part of the business strategy.
