You hopped aboard the on the social media train. Your business is on all social media platforms. You have a well-populated Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, and you’re consistent on Instagram. You have educated yourself andhave a strategy about maintaining and creating consistent content, responding in a timely manner to all comments and inquiries, and engaging followers. You are on the right track!!!
While all the wheels can be in motion, how will you know that your social media marketing strategy is actually working? How do you know that you are meeting your marketing goals? The best way to measure your results is to check social media metrics. There are many metrics available and so many tools that are easy to access. It isn’t as important to follow all metrics but to follow the right ones and with so much to quantify, it can feel overwhelming deciding which metrics are the most important. Well, we’ve narrowed down the top metrics for each platform to help you get started and start analyzing with confidence.
- Volume measures the interest in your brand. Volume indicates the direct action, such as likes, shares, views and comments. People tend to only will only engage if they love or hate something.
- Organic reach measures more than the number of unique “hits” on your post, but also how many people have potential to interact through contact shares, replies, and clicks on your page and posts.
- Engagement has proven to be one of the most important metrics for measuring success of a post. Engagement measures the number of people that have interacted directly with your posts and page.
- Volume of mentions and impressions measure how many times your message has been viewed by your followers and non-followers. When this message is seen by your target audience, they will mention, like, and share your content to help your target audience grow.
- Engagement measures brand awareness, but on Twitter it also sets your position. Because of the volume of posts, Twitter, and for that matter, other social media channels, had to introduce an algorithm that ranks the tweets, so some of them will appear higher in users’ news feeds.
- Post Performance measures impressions, clicks and engagements for any given post similar to Facebook.
- Page Reach measures impressions and unique people your page reached through posts, but also how it compares with previous posts.
- Engagement Rate measures clicks, likes, comments, and shares your content in both organic and paid campaigns, as well as the number of followers acquired through paid campaigns. Use this metric to monitor your performance with your audience.
- Engagement measures clicks, likes, comments, shares, and bookmarks. This metric helps make sure you’re evaluating your account fairly. Millions of followers should result in thousands of engagements. This metric will tell you if your strategy is resonating with your target audience and followers.
- Follower growth indicates when you are doing something right. When measuring growth, follower count, context is important, because if you’re experiencing random spikes or drop offs due to something like a one-time promotion or paid social ads it directly measures your strategy.
- Reach is important in Instagram because this platform is visual and connects to your audience without them having to engage. While engagement is important, the amount of times your content shows up in your audience’s newsfeed also has an impact on how well your posts perform.
Being comfortable and disciplined on your social media strategy and practice will reflect directly on metrics to measure your success. Be fluid with your strategy, if your metrics indicate you are not meeting your goals, change direction!