Before You Create Your Social Campaign, Look At These Metrics First
Social media has become essential for every modern business and blog today. Why? Because social media platforms are the best channel for getting exposure and attracting customers, followers and eventually clients. If you were to look at the online world objectively, you’d soon realize that social media binds everything together.
That said, every company, and every individual builds their online presence through social media channels. But how does one know that their efforts are producing viable results?
Simply put, you measure the outcome. This is where social media metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) come to play. They allow you to measure the results of your strategies and tactics so you know, at all times, if your efforts are in vain. Also, it assigns different metrics to different goals you create for better data tracking. With that in mind, here are a few of the important social media metrics every blogger and marketer out there should track when building their content.
Audience growth
One of the most basic social media metrics that are important to track is the audience growth rate. The number of followers on social media profiles represents the number of people who are interested in what you have to say, share and offer. The more followers, the more proof that your content is valuable.
Your strategies, tactics and other efforts should cause an increase in the number of people following you over time.
Simply put, that proves you’re doing something right and that the word is spreading around. This metric is especially important when measuring visibility, awareness and exposure of your brand. If social media users are flocking to your pages and profiles at an increasing rate, it means you’re, in fact, interesting enough to follow. If this number isn’t changing or decreasing, it's time to switch up your strategies.
If your audience isn't growing, ask yourself these questions:
- Am I being relevant or relatable enough for my audience?
- Am I offering content of value or entertainment that is unique?
- What makes me different from other content out there? Am I highlighting that?
- Are people unfollowing me right after I post?
- (read your captions) Do they sound spammy or sales-like?
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Are your headlines unique, different, stand-out, relevant?
Engagement rates
Social media engagement is arguably the most important metric you should track. Everything you do on your social media pages, such as share content, discuss topics, start conversations, etc., you hope resonates with your followers.
Engagement factors, such as shares, likes, reactions, comments and so on, therefore, indicate how engaging your efforts are. Even if you have a small following to start out with, Instagram, for example, prioritizes engagement. Meaning, the more likes and shares you receive could translate into more chances your content has of being seen due to social algorithms.
However, tracking engagement can be a daunting task, especially when you’re trying to determine just how this engagement impacts your business or blog.
That’s why many marketers and bloggers leverage effective digital marketing reporting tools to gather data in real-time, as well as accurately assess the situation. This can help you understand the engagement and drive it in the direction it suits you the most.
Other online tools you can use:
Social mentions and sentiment
Reputation on social media is vital for business success in today’s socially driven world. One wrong move and you’ll be facing consumer outrage alongside a publicity nightmare for all to see. That’s why all companies or high profile brands are tiptoeing through social media platforms. What they are actually doing is tracking social mentions and sentiment metrics.
Social mentions help track every relevant keyword you opt for. In most cases, those keywords are brand or company mentions throughout social media networks. In other words, you get notified every time someone mentions your name or your company in a social media conversation.
The sentiment metric, as its name suggests, helps you understand the context and the sentiment of those mentions. These metrics are ideal for damage control and risk management tactics. So every time you’re mentioned in a negative context, you can react on time and remedy the situation before things get way out of hand.
One free tool for finding social mentions and your sentiment ranking is Social Mention.
Content reach
Content is the heart and soul of every marketing strategy, including social media marketing. If you can pinpoint one thing that keeps the audiences engaged, it would be content. How engaged it will make them depends on the type and quality of content you produce.
As you may already know, a social media standard, as far as users are concerned, is that content has to be top-quality and highly relevant, aside from being original. Above all, content must entertain, educate and inform so it can hold the interest of anyone interacting with it.
Measuring content reach metric is, therefore, crucial. It will show you just how effective your content is at captivating your audience and more. As an example, if the content is engaging enough to go viral over the social media networks, it means it has the power to affect a much broader audience than you initially thought it would. So continuing sharing it!
Social traffic and conversions
For every content creator, tracking social traffic is another crucial metric. You want a clear picture about how many social media followers are converting to customers, where they are going after your posts, how they found your content, etc.
These metrics can help you calculate the goal conversion rate (GCR) for every social media network and thus determine whether your marketing strategies are bearing any fruit. If your GCR isn’t as good as you’d hoped, it’s time to rethink your approach and make some improvements to your marketing efforts on social media.
Social media platforms are crucial for bloggers and businesses. That’s why your social media presence is vital, and every move you make on your pages requires reliable metrics that will portray the outcome of your efforts.
Author Jacob Wilson
Jacob Wilson is a business consultant, and an organizational psychologist, based in Brisbane. Passionate about marketing, social networks, and business in general. In his spare time, he writes a lot about new business strategies and digital marketing for Bizzmark blog.
