No matter what your business is, being able to measure and analyze the fruits of your labour is important to help you better understand if your efforts are effective. When it comes to social media marketing, campaigns produce a massive amount of data which can seem totally overwhelming at first. So, how do you separate the signal from the noise? Fear not! Here’s a breakdown of which social media metrics you should be measuring and why they matter.
Engagement
Engagement means the number of people liking, commenting and sharing your content. Essentially, this represents how your content is breaking through all of the internet’s clutter and getting the attention of potential consumers. Developing engagement means increasing traffic as well as brand awareness. In order to develop and guide your strategy, you need to pay attention and track which posts did the best. Taking the time every month to sit down and ask yourself: “Okay, which posts garnered the most likes, shares, comments and overall engagement?” will improve your future content tremendously. This way you have facts and figures to base your content strategy on. Keeping track of the results of your social posts will go a long way in the end.
Reach
Measuring reach means tracking the potential number of people that have been served your post. Without running a paid social media campaign, the organic reach of a Facebook page currently sits around 2.6% of your total audience. That means only a fraction of your fans are seeing your content if you aren’t taking advantage of Facebook’s robust ad platform. Pay attention to your reach across all of your networks to make sure that the content that you’re working so hard on creating is actually getting seen! The reach of your posts will help you better understand where you’re experiencing the most growth and where you’re lacking.
Conversion
Your conversion rate is a direct indicator of how your social media efforts are impacting your overall business goals. A conversion can be anything – from signing up for a newsletter, opting for a free trial or downloading an informative PDF. Use Google Analytics to figure out which strategies and content are leading to conversions along with the conversion rate of users who land on your website. Knowing where your conversions came from can help to determine where your emphasis and time is best spent.
Share of Voice (SOV)
Share of voice refers to how much influence you carry compared to your competitors. Without a management platform, acquiring the necessary metrics to analyze Share of Voice can be a bit daunting. You’ll want to tally all of the mentions your brand has received in a certain window of time and then tally the mentions of your competitors in the same time period. Calculate your SOV by dividing your mentions by your competitors’ total number of mentions. Share of Voice helps you determine your brand’s share of the market while conducting some competitive research at the same time. By analyzing how your brand is mentioned and how your competitors are mentioned, you’re able to identify keywords you may not have been aware of before.
Keeping a close eye on these metrics is incredibly important for streamlining your efforts and making the most of your social media campaigns. Paying attention to what content is working, what needs tweaking, what platforms are experiencing the most conversions and what keywords to track all pay a role in your success. These metrics all work in harmony to paint a picture of your content strategies. Measure your metrics diligently and the proof will be in your results!
Need help making sense of your social media marketing campaigns? Give us a shout. We’d love to help.