Be realistic with your goals, understand how to reach them and make necessary adjustments in order to achieve the success that you’ve set out for.
Quantitative Success
Measurable numbers of your online community can be a very broad goal, so choose what you are looking at based on how much influence it has on your business and don’t be distracted by the other numbers. Increasing followers and likes may be beneficial to you because your community is very active in promoting brands that it finds valuable and acting on this buzz created. But make sure that you are keeping your customers engaged, many Facebook likes do not turn into repeat visitors to a Facebook page.
Qualititative Success
Online communities have very strong opinions and are passionate about them. Measuring how often you are talked about online and the positivity of those discussions can mean big (or small) things for your company. Increasing positive mentions of your company or turning around negative conversations can be very impactful for your campaign.
ROI Success
Understanding your ROI is an important key point in realizing your goals. Defining a Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to determine how much you are willing to spend to gain a new customer will go a long way in making it easy to see whether or not your campaign is a success. If you know gaining a new customer will bring you $1,000 lifetime, then you should generally be willing to spend 10% of that to earn their business. After a $10,000 campaign, you should have 100 new customers to consider your campaign a success.
*numbers used are for example purposes only