Social media is a huge driving force for modern marketing interactions and it’s one of the most cost effective ways to increase the visibility and reach of your brand. By using social media, companies can cleverly leverage peer-to-peer influence in order to foster and maintain relationships that are mutually beneficial.
Yet social media efforts need to be measurable – otherwise, how will you know what is working for you and what is not? This is where social media metrics become very important.
What are metrics?
Metrics in social media monitoring are tools used to measure, compare and track performance of a social media marketing campaign. By publishing content on social media, you can both qualify and quantify how it is being received and interacted with, and whether it is generating positive action for your business and a good return on investment for you.
There are many social media metrics that a business can analyse, yet some are of far more value to most business owners.
Types of content metrics for social media monitoring
Creation of high-quality content on your social profile is the key to success. By creating content that you believe will drive consumers to action; you can then use the following social media metrics to measure the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign. One metric alone will not be enough to identify whether or not your campaign is working; it is the mix of metric types that will give you a comprehensive picture of how things are going and allow you to alter your approach where necessary.
Consumption metrics: How many consumers are actively exposed to your content? That is, how many page views or downloads have you triggered?
Lead generation metrics: In other words, how frequently do consumers who follow your content transform into leads for your brand?
Sales metrics: How often do consumers of your content on social media transform into active paying customers for your business?
Sharing metrics: How often do consumers who follow your content share it on with others and become lead generators for your brand?
Consider the following methods of measuring your social media marketing strategy’s effectiveness:
Reach
This relates to campaign visits, or how many times a lead lands on your social profile. It tracks audience growth rate and allows you to directly connect social media activity with a business’s profit margin. It evaluates marketing efforts over a specific time frame.
Interaction
How often have potential customers interacted with your social media profile? It might include liking, commenting, voting, or otherwise engaging with your profile. Compare interactions with campaign visits; this will illustrate the level of engagement users are having once they land on your campaign. You can also delineate your audience into demographic segments so as to learn which group of consumers is most engaged with you and your campaign.
A low level of interaction with a low number of campaign visits is a red flag – leads are net being effectively driven your way and the content on your page is not capturing those audience members who do land there. This requires a rethink of your entire strategy.
You may find you are generating a low level of interaction despite high traffic to your campaign – this suggests that driving leads to your social profile is working well but that the content is not of interest to the audience. This may relate to the quality of the content or it may mean that the audience for your business needs to be better identified and targeted.
The ideal outcome is to elicit a high level of interaction with a high number of campaign visits. This illustrates that you are succeeding at driving traffic towards your social profile and that the content is well targeted to its ideal audience.
Clicks
This refers to the level of response to your content and its shares by consumers visiting your site. Here is where social media marketing is a goldmine, as people for the most part are more inclined to trust the recommendation of their friends, family, and peers than that of advertisers. Where a paid advert might not encourage someone to click through, a like or share by someone a consumer knows will be more likely to elicit a positive response for the social media marketer.
Shares
How often do your prospects redistribute your content within their social network? This metric is an interaction of high value to social media marketers – your prospect becomes a lead generator on your behalf. This activity will increase the momentum of your social media marketing efforts – whether it be by sharing, re-tweeting, or otherwise pushing your content and your visibility to a wider audience. Sharing content equates to greater engagement.
Conversion
How many of your social media visits translate to a visit to your website and a sales completion? Which social networks are better at courting and capturing then converting your target customer? Eliciting conversion is a fine line between clever garnering of consumer attention and interest and pushing your product incessantly so as to lose your audience.
Consumer activity
This is all about the bottom line – money. By combining social media data with business costing data, you can measure how much marketing via social media has saved you as compared with traditional advertising and customer service costs.
Other metrics to consider:
Social reach – how many people can potentially be exposed to your post? The greater the number of followers or sharers you have, the greater the reach of your content.
Influencers – how many people have generated shares by posting your content to their personal network?
Impressions – how often does your content appear in news feeds as a result of follower sharing?
Share rate – what proportion of social media profile visits generate shares?
So what are the top social media metrics that your business should track?
Of the array of metrics to track and use to undertake social media monitoring, some of those that are most valuable and simplest to get started with are:
Facebook Insights – comprehensive business profile metrics, Facebook Insights allows you to go directly to the Platform Insights page and identify all of your pages on Facebook that are currently tracking metric information. Each page can be clicked on for an analysis overview of a vast array of information including page likes, post reach, post engagement, page visits, impressions, and more. You can track organic likes, paid likes, and page unlikes, as well as like sources relating to demographics. You can see numbers of times your posts have been hidden or reported as spam. You can also see metrics for Pages You Watch, including Facebook pages belonging to your competitors.
Twitter Analytics – not as detailed as Facebook Insight, Twitter Analytics offers a 28-day summary of highlights and metrics relating to Tweet numbers, Tweet Impressions, profile visits, mentions, followers and Tweet links. There is information available relating to engagement rates, retweets, link clicks, replies and favourites. Follower demographics and consumer behaviour metrics are available as well.
LinkedIn Analytics – demonstrates post performance and audience demographic information, including impressions, interactions, clicks, engagement, follower acquisition and shares. Your performance comparison to similar companies is also available.
Google+ Insights – offers a simple overview for visibility (total, page, post and photo views); engagement; and basic page follower demographics.
Google Analytics Metrics – These metrics allow you to learn more about your website conversions, lead submissions, sales and email subscriptions. You can combine your business goals with social media reporting to identify which social platforms will best suit your business. This considers metrics including page views and session duration.
By using metrics to understand your social media marketing performance, you can better decide where your social media marketing efforts and attention should be directed – to build your customer base and increase your profits.
Want more info on top performing platforms? Read our blogs!
LINKEDIN: Tips for marketing and blogging on LinkedIn and LinkedIn: Latest news and social snippets
FACEBOOK: Facebook insights for business PART 1 and Lessons to be learned from your competitors on Facebook PART 2
TWITTER: Reasons to love Twitter for Business and Using Twitter for Business
SNAPCHAT: Snapchat 101 – Harness its power for marketing
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