Success can taste so sweet, especially when you meet your goals on social media platforms and have winning accounts and of course, happy clients.
But how do we determine success in this field? Is there a blueprint for what you should be measuring?
Each platform – Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube, to name a few – has its own strengths and importance in the social media landscape, and monitoring your performance is imperative when utilising them for business.
From dealing with different clients with various and often unique needs and goals, you quickly learn that there are some metrics which should be part of your standard “to watch” list. These should help you determine whether or not the work you plough into the accounts is proving to be fruitful, or needs reviewing.
Because social media accounts serve both a marketing and communication purpose, monitoring a combination of metrics will give you a clear picture of what is happening. Ones to consider that apply to most platforms are:
- Follower/fan growth, and the ratio of your followers to who you’re following
- Follower/fan engagement – are they sparking conversations with you? Are they positive or negative? Do they help endorse your brand with their activity and interactions?
- Quality of fanbase – are they engaging with you, starting or adding to conversations, or are they just following and not adding to your accounts?
- Account reach – the number of users who favourite, retweet or share your content
- Campaign or hashtag reach – are these gaining momentum? Are people utilising them in the way you intended?
- Traffic – the number of users who are visiting your site from your social media accounts’ referrals
- Conversions – the number of users who subsequently sign up for your service or buy your product as a result of your social media presence, efforts and engagement
Also, consider the following measurements when using and managing a Facebook page:
- Organic vs Fans reach – organic reach refers to content views by people that are not fans of the page, but have directly accessed your page or seen its content. Keeping an eye on this will help you identify ways to improve your content’s visibility. For example, when organic reach is very close to fan reach, it usually means that people cannot be exposed to your content if they are not already fans
- People Talking About This/Storytellers – this highlights the number of your page's fans who do something to show their engagement with you to their friends. You want people to keep talking about your company and brand, so the more fans who share your content and spread the word about you, the better
- Click-through rate – focuses on the number of people who were interested enough in your content to further explore it. This is demonstrated by people clicking on an image to see the larger version, following a link to an article or taking time to watch your video
Depending on your goals and the life cycle stage of your accounts (inception/introduction, growth or maturity), expect the combination of metrics you choose to monitor, to change.
Bear in mind that before you dive deep into your business’ social media activity, a strategy with desired milestones and outcomes should be developed to help you drive your activities.