Of all the PR activities being used today, social media has the most measurement capabilities. Unlike most other PR tactics, like earned media placements, social media can be much more easily tied to your return on investment if you are using the right tools to measure your engagement. While every person or organization will have different metrics they are interested in, below, we’ve listed five of UPRAISE’s favorite ways to measure social media engagement.
1. Followers
Most marketers agree that follow count isn’t nearly as important as other metrics like engagement or reach, however, it is still important if you are interested in increasing your followers and brand awareness. Tracking your growth rate and identifying trends around dips or increases in followers can help determine your content calendar.
Additionally, how many followers your profiles have, and which ones are growing at a faster rate can help determine where your energy should go. For example, if your LinkedIn profile is growing faster and receiving higher engagement than your Twitter profile, it may be worth putting more resources into your more popular account. However, as a business, it is important to have a presence on most social media channels (you want to be where your customer is), but it is ok to put more effort into the more lucrative profiles.
2. Engagement
Likes, shares, and comments are just some of the activities you can track across social media platforms. High engagement rates can also link to your follower count as it makes your profile more easily found thanks to most social platform’s algorithms preferring highly engaged posts and accounts.
No matter what type of business you run, engagement is an important measurement as it gives your clients (and potential clients) a simple and direct way to connect with your brand. Tracking engagement, and in particular, which types of posts are the most engaged, will give your social media team insight into what types of posts are resonating most with your audience. With that information, they can plan future posts that include the type of content your audience wants most.
Keep in mind, every platform will have different levels of engagement, so don’t compare across platforms. For example, Instagram typically has higher engagement than Twitter and Facebook, but saw a decline in 2020.
3. Click-Throughs
Unlike media relations, social media gives you complete control over including links you can build and track. It’s vital you be able to account for whether your social followers click the link in your post in order to visit your website or whatever piece of collateral you’ve linked in. A high click-through rate means your social post resonated enough with your follower to make them act. It can also help dictate what type of posts you create in the future.
4. Social Share of Voice
Are you wondering how your competitors are being mentioned compared to your own brand? Social Share of Voice (SSOV) is a competitive analysis that allows you to compare your brand’s mentions across social platforms against a competitor. As some brands may have overwhelming data around their mentions, you may need special social media monitoring tools outside the free offerings on most platforms.
5. Conversion Rate
Running multiple social media accounts can be a full time job; you want to make sure the time being spent on them is resulting in some sort of return on your investment. Every business will have its own way of measuring success, but one simple way to track conversions is through the links you built to measure click-throughs. Use services like Google Analytics to track whether people have visited your website from social media and then what they did once on your website. Make sure to offer materials that capture their information such as a white paper that requires inputting an email address, so you can connect with them in the future.
Luckily, all of the most popular social media platforms have their own dashboards for measuring the above points. However, being able to interpret and act on the data isn’t always easy. That’s why we recommend working with a PR and marketing agency like UPRAISE. We offer social measurement tools beyond the standard offer as well as concrete plans to act on those insights. Contact us today to learn how we can help you grow your social media platforms.