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Today, we are talking about the thing on every business owners mind are oh, I, and specifically chatting how you can measure ROI in a Facebook group. So teacher authors, go ahead and reheat that cup of coffee, because I'm your host, Cassandra Foster. And we're about to get schooled in socials. Welcome back to school and socials. We are jumping right in to the nitty gritty today, and talking ROI. Now before we get to measuring ROI of a Facebook group, let's break down what ROI is slash can be. So ROI stands for return on investment, and is traditionally defined in corporate America as the money you make back from a business task you invested in. So for example, if McGraw Hill publishers spent $100,000 to publish a new math textbook, and then made $1 million from that textbook, their ROI would be $900,000. But ROI isn't always monetary. Because we have lots of other assets besides just money that we invest in to our businesses, we have time, knowledge, experience, etc. And those things can also be returned to us. We spend our time taking a course, we've invested our time and probably our money, and we come out on the other end with more knowledge, knowledge becomes our return on investment. Could that knowledge lead to more money for your business? Absolutely. But in that moment, the task of taking that course does not directly equal have money in the bank. For another example, firing out a business tasks that doesn't directly bring in money but needs to get done. Like bookkeeping, you pay your bookkeeper to do that task, but that isn't making you money. Instead, your return on investment is more time to work on other parts of your business. Less stress when it comes to tax time, more mental capacity to think of new resources to create. So when it comes to measuring ROI in a Facebook group, you want to consider both types, the traditional monetary definition and the non monetary returns that you can benefit from. So before we chat more about monetary ROI and Facebook groups, I'd highly recommend going back and listening to episodes two and six, where I dive into why Facebook groups are beneficial, and why you should bother creating one for your teacher printer business. Those episodes will help give you some context as we chat Facebook groups and ROI today in the traditional sense, if you want to know if your Facebook group is actually bringing money into your business, there are a few factors that you'll want to look at. The first is reflecting on what you've posted in your Facebook group. Do you post links to your TPT wrote resources in your group? Do you post links to your blog posts or other long form content? Do you do a mixture of both? Or neither? If you have not directly posted any links for your business in your Facebook group, unfortunately, it becomes almost impossible to figure out your monetary ROI. Yes, people might now know about you and your business. But we can't for certain say that any of that traffic that has come to your store has been from that group. Now if you mostly post links to your store in your Facebook group, you'll want to take a look at how many times that link got clicked, which you can do by pressing view insights on the bottom of each of the posts with links. This gives you a ballpark idea about how many people from the group navigate it to that resource. Then you want to go and look at your TPT dashboard and look for the click throughs conversion rate and earnings for facebook.com. This can be a little tricky though, because if you also run a business page on Facebook, you'll also see any click throughs from there as well. Those are all kind of lumped in to that facebook.com that you'll see pop up in your TPT dashboard. So I do recommend creating a UTM code for links you post in your Facebook group. However, they're not the end all be all of tracking ROI, which we'll get to in a minute. But when creating UTM codes for your posts, you can just simply put Facebook as the source and group as the campaign. You don't have to go crazy with them naming every post to something different. Just having Facebook as the source and group as the campaign will easily allow you to see when it pops up on your dashboard. What came from your group. There won't be any question where it came from. And this is going to allow you To see how much money you've made directly from the members of your Facebook group, however, like I just said, UTM codes aren't perfect, because there's always some chance that they aren't accurate. For example, someone could click through from your UTM code and get interested in another resource that maybe they see on the sidebar, they click out and then they come back. And that gets a little murky when it comes to reporting on the TBT dashboard. But UTM codes are a good place to start to just get a sense of where your monetary ROI is at now, if you're someone who mostly posts links to your blog, in your Facebook group, or other long form content, like a podcast, or a YouTube channel, you want to look at the percentage of traffic coming to your website, podcast or YouTube channel from Facebook. And then you can compare to see if it has increased since starting the group, you can also head to your TPT dashboard, and check on the stats for your website has traffic and conversion from your website gone up since starting your group. And if you use any UTM codes in your blog posts, you can also keep an eye on those as well to see if conversions have gone up. Again, at this time with the TPT dashboard set up. There's no perfect way of finding the exact monetary ROI of each traffic source. But it's a great place to start to see if your Facebook group is providing you a monetary return on investment. There is so much pressure this time of the year to buy more stuff from Black Friday sales to Christmas ads. But I don't want you to buy more stuff, I want you to get the right things you need to uplevel your business in this season. So that's why I've opened up my mini Social Media Console scheduled for the next three months. So that we can make resources that are going to get stuck in your downloads and courses that are going to go immediately to your desktop graveyard like thing of the past. Instead, you're going to get my brain and your business for a focus 30 minutes so that you can make sure you have a solid plan moving forward. And you know, your social media will help you reach your business goals. This is not a one size fits all solution. Instead, you're going to get targeted advice that is focused on you and your business. And for Black Friday. And until these spots sell out, you're going to be able to get it for $47, which is the lowest price point these mini consults have ever been. We're talking transformational advice that will make your social media work harder for you. For less than a night out. This isn't stuff. It's the thing you need to get clarity and move forward with your social media marketing, you can grab your discounted spot right now in the show notes. But hurry, because once these spots that I've opened up for the next three months are gone, this price point will be gone too. I can't wait to make 2020 for the year that your social media marketing helps you reach all of your big business goals.

Now let's chat about non monetary ROI. When it comes to your initial investment, Facebook groups can be a lower time and effort investment when compared to starting out on other social media marketing platforms and with other social media marketing techniques. This is something I chat about in episode six if you want to go back and give that a listen. So in my book that immediately UPS any return that it's going to give me if it has a lower time and effort investment up front. In fact, I'm probably going to be happier. And I'm guessing you will probably feel the same way too, because no one wants to start something that feels super hard. And we all only have so much time and mental capacity to give to our businesses. So tasks that can give us a decent return on our most precious investments are a win for sure. Facebook groups are also a great place for market research. Since the group members are most likely posting questions about their current issues or pain points, you can start gathering this information from your group. And that can save you time since you won't have to spend as much time doing your own market research when you're trying to figure out what to create for resources. And this can become a monetary return on investment in the future. Since the ideas for those resources people will be purchasing came from your group. You could track these by taking note of ideas that you got from your Facebook group, and then tracking how many of those ideas actually be some resources that you put into your store, you can even get really specific and track those resources month to month to see how much they make you in the long run. Finally, Facebook groups are perfect for growing your community and growing your community can have non monetary and monetary benefits. First, having a community of engaged members that have learned the value you can bring to them, who've tried out your resources, and our fans means less time spent nurturing in the long run. Getting to this point with your community means more people are likely to purchase from you right away. They're what we call a warm audience. They know you they know the value you provide. And when you post something, they know this is going to be good, I need to get my hands on it. So with an established group, you can spend less time at creating free content and nurturing content, though I never recommend you completely stop giving your audience free value, especially as your community is going to continue to grow and you're going to have new community members. But you can get to a point where you don't have to create so much of that type of content. And you can also experience more monetary benefit, so less content creation, but perhaps more monetary benefit, which is the Win Win of Facebook groups in my opinion. So when it comes to measuring your ROI in a Facebook group, you can focus on the traditional idea of ROI, which is monetary, but you can and I believe should assess the non monetary returns as well. There is no magic formula for what your Facebook should be returning to you. But in the end, the returns you receive from your group should feel good to you. You might be in a season where non monetary returns like spending less time and effort and getting more information to help you grow your business is what you're really looking for. Or you might be in a season where you are truly focusing on monetary returns. Either way, check in with yourself and your current goals when you measure your Facebook ROI. Okay, we have covered all things ROI when it comes to Facebook groups. So now I have a challenge for you if you have a Facebook group. After listening to this episode, I want you to head to your group and your TPT dashboard or your website analytics and get a pulse on your ROI. Knowing where your current ROI stands will help you make informed decisions as you move forward with your group. Alright, cool coffee friends. Thanks so much for listening. If you're loving getting schooled in socials, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Also, I would love it if you left a review so that other teacher authors like you can start getting schooled in socials too. All right, I'll see you in the next episode.