Do you know if your social media strategy is working? If you’re unsure, there are various metrics you could be tracking to get the best results for all your social media efforts.
What are social media metrics and why are they important?
Metrics, or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), can include everything from Growth (your increasing number of followers) to Impressions (the number of times your content is displayed online) to the most popular of metrics: Engagement (number of likes, favorites, shares, comments and private messages). There is a lot more data that goes beyond just these metrics and it’s also important to remember that because each social media platform is different, some metrics can be platform specific.
Social media metrics are about analyzing your data to determine how much of an impact your brand has online. They’re important to your social media strategy because you can’t grow or evolve your brand’s digital presence if you don’t have any data to base improvement on. By measuring your brand’s metrics, you’ll have an in-depth look at how your channels performed in the past and present, and have the power to change how they do in the future. Tracking KPIs allows you to show how they’re received by your followers and audience, and just how much of an impact they have with both your tangible and intangible social media content.
Focusing on the right metrics
So, if you were the social media manager for a brand, which metrics would you use to track specific data?
If you wanted to figure out who your audience was, the obvious choice would be to do an in-depth analysis of the people who follow your accounts and use that information to create a persona, then tailor your content to them. You could also monitor relevant keywords and hashtags by social listening to discover which users are talking about you online. The important thing to remember with learning who your audience is, is differentiating between those who are active and engaged, and those who are not so you can then strategize and expand your audience.
To determine whether or not you’re doing better than your competitors, there are various metrics you can track. The first being the number of followers your brand has versus the number of those your competitor has. You can also check engagement (who is getting more likes, shares and replies on each of your posts), and who is getting tagged more on different platforms. Another way is by doing a simple Google search of your brand or product. Whose name comes up first in the results? The top result means more people are searching your brand by name, engaging with your brand’s content and ensuring it exists in the digital realm.
A simple way to track what people are saying about your brand is social listening. How many times are you getting tagged outside of your posted content? Is what they are saying good or bad? Another metric to gage is sentiment, or social media influence (SMI). Social sentiment is a way of measuring the emotions behind your mentions. It’s not just about how many people are talking about your brand, it’s more about how they’re talking about you online. What is their tone? Is the comment section positive?
The best metric to determine when to publish your content is to track your reach. How many people saw and engaged with your Twitter post at 7:30 AM? Was it more or less than the number of users who engaged with an 8:45 PM post? Having several weeks or even month’s worth of this data could be extremely helpful in knowing the best time to post in the future.
To work out what kind of content your audience enjoys the most, look no further than your engagement rate. By this time you may be annoyed with this metric, but it’s important when tracking how active your audience is with your content. If your audience truly enjoys a specific type of post, you’ll see it through quantifiable numbers such as likes, shares, comments and user mentions. SMI can also be used to track whether your audience likes your content because it can create a positive effect on social media users, which can then result in more brand loyalty and positive behaviors.
Choosing which social media channels are right for your brand is an extremely important decision. Just because TikTok and Snapchat exist does not mean your brand has to join in. If it’s not the right space for your brand, it could mean posting into a social media blackhole. The questions you should first answer when determining which platforms your brand should be on are: What type of content does my brand post? Do I have enough of it to keep another account active? Where are my competitors posting and what are they posting about? Where is my current audience and do we need them to follow us on every platform? After tracking your audience metrics and learning how your competitors are doing, it should be easier to answer the questions above.
There are many actions you can take to better-perform on social media. If your goal is to increase your audience growth rate, you can host virtual contests to get more people to like and follow your accounts, while also keeping your fans engaged. You can be specific with the content you post as visuals, video and media are high-performers. Be active on your account by listening and responding quickly to those commenting and replying to your posts. Exploring paid social is another option as precise audience targeting helps remind people who have visited your page to go back and engage with your content.
By knowing which metrics to track, social media managers can be constantly aware of what matters the most to their audience and their brand and use that data to succeed online.
References:
Chen, J. (2021, March 26). The most important social media metrics to track. Sprout Social. Retrieved September 12, 2021, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-metrics/.
Khan, G. F. (2018). Chapter 1. In Creating value with social media analytics: Managing, aligning, and mining social media text, networks, actions, location, apps, hyperlinks, multimedia, & search engines data (pp. 36–64). essay, CreateSpace.
Sonnenberg, A. (2021, June 10). Social media metrics that you need to track carefully every month. Agorapulse. Retrieved September 12, 2021, from https://www.agorapulse.com/blog/social-media-metrics/.