Essential metrics for monitoring & optimizing social media marketing
Social media marketing is about content and value. However, it is also about numbers. If you don’t watch numbers closely and see how they develop over time, you might end up spending too much time, money and effort on something that is not paying off as it should. This is why in order to evolve your digital marketing strategies, you need to pay attention to metrics. Moreover, you need to use those metrics to modify and optimize your strategies and approach.
This post will give you an idea about which numbers to watch and how much analysis you should put into each of them. Be sure to visit us back soon for part 2.
Metrics for monitoring & optimizing social media marketing:
1- Number of followers
Wether you have social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest or any other platform, it is important to keep an eye on your number of followers. The number of your followers will give you an idea about the value of your content and activity to your audience. However, you should not depend on this metric for too long, especially since many Facebook and Twitter fans and followers could be bought rather than cultivated over time.
2- Number of interactions
Many marketers rely on the number of interactions with a post to measure engagement. They use the number of likes, shares and retweets to boast their success at attracting audience. Although no one can underestimate the value of engagement, businesses and brands should watch out as this metric is not very reliable. Why? because many people might like a tweet or even share it without actually clicking it. Moreover, many people would engage with you on Twitter and Facebook without ever visiting your site.
3- Clicks on Links
When we first started The Global Now, we used to rely heavily on organic traffic. We avoided using paid advertising for almost 3 months but then we surrendered to it. When I first started promoting posts on ourFacebook page, I used to boost posts to get likes. However, I learned, the hard way, that I needed to go for ‘get clicks’ instead. The more clicks we got, the more traffic our site had. Moral of the story: having great clickable content does not guarantee you organic traffic.
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4- Post reach
Your average post on Facebook or tweet on Twitter will not be shown to all your fans. Your tweet or post reach is determined by complicated algorithms that take time of posting, user interaction and other factors into account. Since reach is not equal to the number of followers, you should be careful when using metric to use for optimizing your social media campaigns.
5- Website traffic
Thousands of people are currently using social media to drive traffic to their websites. Whether it is a landing page, a sales page or a blog, you need to carefully monitor the traffic you are getting to your site to see how successful your marketing efforts are. Moreover, website traffic and traffic by page are great ways to learn what you are doing right or wrong and optimize your strategy accordingly.
6- Traffic per traffic source
This is one of the most important metrics you can use to improve your social media marketing. How? By monitoring traffic from Facebook or Twitter alone, you can better learn about your audience preferences, how to target them right, what content interests them more and so on. Breaking down your traffic by traffic source helps you figure out which activities pay off and which ones don’t.
We still have many more metric to share with you so be sure to check back soon for part 2.
Follow Abiola Ewuola on Twitter: @Abiola_Ewuola, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: Abiola Ewuola, join us on Facebook: Abiola Ewuola or check us out on Google+:G+
Follow Abiola Ewuola on Twitter: @Abiola_Ewuola, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: Abiola Ewuola, join us on Facebook: Abiola Ewuola or check us out on Google+:G+