Tracking the wrong metrics can seriously interfere with the success of your social media campaign. You’ll get a false impression of how effective different aspects of it are. To avoid making serious blunders, it’s important to learn what marketing metrics you should measure depending on what your goals are. So this post breaks it down into four of the most common goals people want to achieve with social media.
#1 Increase Brand Awareness
Building brand awareness is one of the best ways to use social media. You can use it to spread your brand throughout networks. The more people you reach, the faster your audience grows. So if you want to see how well your campaign is doing at increasing brand awareness, you should be tracking the following metrics:
- Social Interactions: likes, views, comments, new follows, tags, and anything else that can be done on social media is a social interaction. The more interactions happening with your brand, the more awareness you have generated. Put simply, people can’t interact with something they are not aware of. Set growth targets here and see if your campaign is helping you get the increased number of interactions you need.
- Brand Mentions. Track hashtags that contain your brand or that are related to your industry. Track how many mentions your brand gets. The more mentions you have, the more aware your audience is. And in this case, a mention means that they actually are aware of who you are and what you offer whereas a social interaction more broadly just tells you they are aware of your social media profile or even just that particular post they interacted with.
Look at these in two ways. First, look at your performance as a whole across all of your social media efforts. Secondly, look at your performance on specific channels. Are you getting more brand mentions on twitter than you are on Instagram? Why is that? What are you doing on twitter that you aren’t doing on Instagram?
#2 Foster Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is a great way to get more word of mouth advertising which is the most powerful yet most elusive form to capture. Social media can help systematize that elusive word of mouth by allowing you to foster loyalty through improved engagement and service that has a more personalized feel. So if you’re wondering what marketing metrics you should measure to gauge loyalty, here are a few suggestions:
- Followers. If your audience follows you, it’s because they perceive your brand as offering ongoing value in some way. Your followers are the ones who are more likely to come to you first when they need something and they are more likely to share your content and talk about your brand.
- Social Interactions. While the total quantity of interactions can help you see how much awareness is growing about your brand, looking at the kinds of social interactions you are generating can give you a better sense of how your brand is perceived. Are users seeing your posts without liking or commenting? Are the comments you are getting largely positive or negative? Are the conversations happening around your brand supporting your message or harming it? Do a qualitative analysis of what those social interactions are actually doing.
For these, you will want to measure not just totals but track the rate of growth. For example, if your number of followers is still growing but its pace has slowed down, this is an early indicator of a problem. You also want to see your interactions increasing at a steady rate as well. It should be at least the same rate as your growth in followers.
#3 Generate Leads
Social media can help you learn more about who your target customer is and what their interests are. It can also put you right where you need to be to participate in the relevant discussions they are having. But how do you know your social media is actually helping you generate leads? Here are a few of the most metrics to measure this goal:
- Channel-Specific Traffic. Your total traffic tells you how many total visitors your website is getting. Channel-specific traffic tells you where those visitors are coming from. So you can compare the relative strength and weakness of each channel you are using. This gives you an early signal about which channels you need to put more work into.
- Follower Demographics. Learn more about the interests and needs of the audience you are reaching on social media. Are you actually reaching your target customer or is your message getting misdirected? The better your followers match up with your ideal customer’s profile, the more effectively targeted your social media campaign is and the more powerful it will be as a lead generator.
You can find channel-specific traffic through Google analytics. For learning about follower demographics, there is some limited data available from sources like Twitter analytics and Facebook analytics. But for more granular data, you want to find a follower demographics tool that will find and sort more data about your followers across all social media platforms.
#4 Increase Conversion Rate
You can use engagement and story telling tactics that work with the particular platforms you are using to create a more convincing overall message that will lead to an increased conversion rate. Here are two places to start when you are deciding what marketing metrics you should measure to see if you are on the right track:
- Bounce rate: unless you are purposely sending them to a landing page that will redirect them, you want to see a lower bounce rate. The longer a visitor stays on your site, the more likely they are to convert. That means more opportunities to help encourage them to go for the purchase.
- Visit to complete ratio. Your social media efforts might successfully drive more people to your website. But of that increase in web traffic, how many of those new visitors are actually making it all the way through to completion? If the increase in traffic isn’t paired with an increase in completion, your social media message might not be lining up with your on site message.
Conversion is not the primary strength of any social media platform. However, knowing what marketing metrics you should measure for conversion can help you understand whether or not it is playing an effective supportive role.
A Final Note on What Marketing Metrics You Should Measure
The best way to figure out what marketing metrics you should measure is to really think about what the metric is telling you and whether or not it really matters for you. After that, you just need to develop a plan for monitoring your social media results. Start tweaking your strategy according to the results that actually matter!
