In today’s world, if you’re not involved in a social community it is almost as if you do not exist as a business. However, it is more than just creating profile for your company and being there. Businesses must be an active member in these communities in order to be heard.

But how does one track whether or not their efforts and methods are working?

To begin with, Facebook is designed for customers to become fans of the companies and brands they love. That fan number alone provides you with a definite number to the audience you are reaching. Facebook also provides insights that allow you to track your audience reach (the number of fans or friends of fans your post is seen by) and engagement (the amount of people, fans or non fans, interacting with your posts through a comment/like/share) over a period of time.

Another network to monitor is Twitter. Similar to Facebook, the number of followers you have is a great starting point of tracking your effectiveness. Twitter allows for you to get alerts via email every time a twitter user mentions or retweets your twitter handle. This will allow for you to catalog the amount of “twitter activity” you get on a daily/weekly/monthly basis by storing the emails. Also, utilizing custom hashtags with promotions is a great way to track the number of people talking about the promotion by viewing a timeline related to it.

The last social community to track is Pinterest. Again, tracking the number of followers you have is a great starting point, but you can take it further by calculating the number of re-pins you have on your brands boards.

Each of these networks allow for monitoring of the exact touch points and ways in which users interact with brands. This data will allow you to examine and plan for how each social medium can be used to ultimately help sell a product.