Social media campaigns should be evaluated based on engagement metrics like shares, revisits, and actions taken rather than just likes. Assessing the true impact is challenging given the many ways people can encounter content online. While traditional media effects could be quantified by sales, social media allows free publishing and a more complex impact to analyze. Tools like Facebook insights and Google Analytics provide page administrators diagnostic data on metrics and demographics of their audience.

1. Analysts
• The popularity of any social media campaign should not be based solely on
the number of “Likes” a page receives, but rather the number of people
who revisit the page, share the page, and take action based on the
campaign. The complexity of social media makes it incredibly difficult to
track the progress any campaign makes because there is an indefinite
number of ways to see something on the Internet. (Assessing Social Media
Effects)
Example: “a fan is worth 445 people”
• As social media gives everyone the opportunity to create material and
publish it online for free, analyzing its effects is much more complicated.
For classical media, effect research was usually measured in some
quantifiable way. (Difference from Classical Media Effects Research)
Example : number of newspapers sold
• Facebook has statistical insights for the administrators of a page, including
shares, likes and visits. Google Analytics? (Diagnostic Tools)
• Example : demographical data that shows where likes come from,
separated by country, age and gender