How can you measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns with management tools?

Clarity in your objectives is crucial in your metric selection. Are you aiming to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate leads, boost sales, or improve customer engagement? Then, compare your metrics to industry benchmarks or past campaign performance to assess success. Are your metrics in line with what's considered successful in your industry?

I think in addition to SMART, ROSTIR and PESO can be named as usefull frameworks while setting campaign goals. These frameworks can provide managers more comprehensive points of view.

It's also worth comparing your social media goals against industry benchmarks. For example, if your goal is to improve brand engagement make sure to compare your goals against a couple of competitors (both large and establish social media profiles and up and coming new profiles) to ensure you're along the right lines. I recommend using Fanpage Karma for this (take the figures with a pinch of salt). Plus they offer a free trial!

I’m a massive fan of AgoraPulse - the reporting is second-to-none, and I can create reports with just one click. It’s great to see content and associated metrics across a number of channels all in one place.

In my honest opinion a lot of these platforms are very overpriced these days, especially compared to pre-pandemic prices (I guess they realised a lot of businesses moved online and saw an opportunity to increase their prices). These tools absolutely have their place and are a must have for many businesses, but please ensure you are familiar with the analytics section on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok etc for those moments when you can't rely on your management tool.

When using a management tool, ensure you connect your social media accounts and data sources to: - Connect all social media accounts. - Integrate with analytics tools. - Explore integration with platforms like Facebook Pixel. - Enable comprehensive data access. - Facilitate unified campaign management.

One thing I've found helpful is to meet as a team and discuss the context behind the numbers to combine both quantitative and qualitative data ?? "Engagement was down on Facebook that week because the graphic designer was on holiday so I had to do what I could in canva and the posts weren't up to their usual standard" "Reach was up on Instagram last week because I posted that story on Saturday, but actually it's not sustainable long term" The classic example most social media executives can relate to is that post they spent ages to plan and create which flopped because of the social media blackout as a result of the Queen's death.

Test, test, and test again - but the most important thing is to do what is comfortably consistent. Don’t simply chase the engagement metrics.

Testing is where you're able to try out new content, reach a new audience, or implement new branding. Testing is essential to keeping your brand fresh across social platforms, and it will inform you where your audience is and where you should focus your energy.