Analytics

After doing all the hard work of researching your brand’s market and then creating content that was geared to resonate with your audience. Now is the time to work out just how much of an impact your content has had, which pieces worked where and maybe why they did well, or didn’t. This is maybe the most scrutinized aspect of being a social media administrator, the analytics. The first layer of information you can gather when people view your content. You can sort by different factors such as: average time on page, bounce rate, pageviews. With this data, you should be able find answers to questions like these: Did you craft a post that brought on a huge spike in traffic? Did your users spend more time on a particular piece or genre of content? Did a piece of content garner a large number of comments or shares on social media? The answers to these questions and questions like these are labelled as key performance indicators (KPI) and serve to evaluate the success of every bit of content posted. There are four main areas your social media KPIs should be focusing on: engagement, reach, leads, and customers.?

Engagement:

Engagement is THE area that you should be concerned with on social media. It is the catalyst for improvement. Engagement measures the number of likes, shares, and comments that your brand’s social media updates receive. Having a large reach with low engagement is usually not a great sign because it shows that your marketing message or content just does not resonate. Reaching millions of people means nothing if they aren't interested in what you offer, whether it be a product or service. As long as your audience is engaged, no matter how small that audience is, it will grow organically and generate more leads. On platforms like Facebook and Twitter, engagement plays a major role in how many people actually even ever see your update.?

The actual key performance indicators that you can measure will vary by social media platform, but typically include the following:

Clicks - Link clicks are reflective of the quality of the title and image included on your post. The majority of people (especially new people) are only going to click on posts that interest them. A large number of clicks with very few likes and shares shows that your post got their attention but didn't deliver the exceptional quality needed for the viewer to engage. Great overall engagement with a low amount of clicks indicates that you need to work on how you pitch your content by testing different titles or visuals.

Likes - Likes lead to more attention because human beings, as opposed to those pesky bots, naturally gravitate towards things that are popular. More likes also signal to most platform algorithms that this particular content deserves a higher spot in search results.

Shares - Hitting "like" on a post is a passive, mindless action. Likes are good and you definitely want them, but sharing is a conscious decision. When someone shares your post (or retweets, etc.) they are giving a personal recommendation to their friends, colleagues, and family. Because of this, shares are a great indication of the quality of your work.??

Comments - The point of being on social media is to be — well, social. Interesting, relevant content sparks a conversation, or conversations. Even if people leave critical comments, you're better off with that than having no comments at all. Praise, criticism, and general discussion are all helpful for improving your marketing, but silence is not. Getting comments on your comments is a reliable sign that your content is hitting all the right points of interest.?

Brand mentions - Hashtags or mentions show that people are having a conversation about your brand even when you're not even in the room. This is another social media KPI that really focuses on your relevance because it shows that you are maintaining top-of-mind awareness.

Profile visits - Not all social media platforms will provide this metric, but if it's there, it's worth your attention. Many social media websites are used as search engines for brand research today. There will be plenty of people that follow you, but they may never visit your profile. The people that are just starting to scope out your business, however, will definitely visit your profile. This KPI isn't as important as the others, as you can't really measure intent to buy, but profile visits do indicate interest in your brand beyond your last post.

Active followers - An active follower is considered to be someone who has logged in and interacted with your content within the past 30 days; unfortunately, for most brands, the majority of people who "like" or follower your page are unlikely to visit it regularly, let alone check out its content.?

Reach:

Reach is an old-school marketing metric that still remains important today. It indicates how far your message is actually traveling — how many eyes it's getting in front of. Measuring reach on social media can be misleading at times as it only shows how many people potentially saw your post or that it was made available. Unlike engagement, which has definitive answers such as number of likes, reach is really just an estimate.

You can measure reach by tracking the following KPIs:

Followers or fans - The total number of people following your brand on social media indicate your reach without any engagement.?

Impressions - Impressions show how many times your brand’s post showed up in someone's timeline, either because they are already following you or because someone they know has liked or shared your content.

Traffic data - This is a huge one. What percentage of the traffic to your website is coming from social media? If you're investing a good amount of time and effort into your social media content, you'll want to make sure that this number reflects that. Use easily accessible social media tools that will give you accurate reports on your brand’s traffic data.

Leads:?

Once your social media accounts start gaining traction, it's easy to get caught up in how many likes and shares you're getting. It feels good to see people enjoying your content, but what about the bottomline? To ensure you are getting the best return on investment (ROI) from your social media, you have to ask the tough question: How many of these engaged fans are actually interested in making a purchase from my company? Your brand might have an enormous following on Instagram because people love the photos, but how does that translate to new sales? To put it another way, say you have a small following on LinkedIn, but it consistently generates new leads. Which one deserves more attention? If you can't answer that question if you aren't measuring lead generation from social media. If you aren't generating leads, you're either on the wrong platform or your content isn't engaging to your potential buyers. The sooner you identify the problem, the better — but you have to start tracking to find out. You can also gain valuable insight by looking into the demographics of the people who are seeing and responding to your content?

Customers:

No Inbound strategy would be complete without measuring the number of acquired customers. Most of your social media posts should be focused on providing content for your audience and having a conversation with them — but when the time comes for you to ask for something in return, you want to know how many of those fans actually end up making it to the finish line. This is the ultimate measurement of your success in social media marketing. If you've truly found the right people and kept them engaged, they'll be interested in buying your product or service. You shouldn't expect to have high new customer rates from social media because a lot of your followers will be current customers and another significant portion are only interested in the content. That's just the way it goes. However, you want to pay attention to which social media channels produce the highest and lowest numbers. This shows you where to focus more time and it shows you where your best leads are coming from.

Some might think tracking customer acquisition and conversion rates from social media isn't necessary, but how else are you going to honestly measure the ROI from social media? Engagement and reach are fun to measure because they make your brand look good, but you have to track the KPIs that paint the full picture. The goal of measuring social media KPIs isn't to justify your marketing strategy as a social media admin, it's to improve it.