Data is an essential resource when it comes to marketing strategy, and in the realm of digital marketing — social media metrics hold tons of valuable information. In this blog, we’re exploring the basics of social media metrics and breaking down how to implement specific insights into an actionable campaign strategy, regardless of how big your following is.
Given the ever-evolving nature of social media, there’s no set rule book for ensuring best practices, but understanding your audience and building connections will always be essential — regardless of new metrics or algorithm changes. Having a claimed business profile (as opposed to a personal user) for most social media platforms allows you to monitor account activity and performance, and although each platform has its own specific set of analytics, the only metrics you should be concerned about are ones that help track performance in relation to specific goals.
Defining goals is essential to developing a social media strategy and allows you to measure campaign performance. All metrics are interesting and representative of your audience, but if they aren’t helping you measure specific goals then you don’t need to fixate on them. For example, if you’re looking to increase website traffic, your defining metric will be the click-through rate (CTR) of your website link. A great way to monitor what consumers are doing once they get to your site is through Google Analytics. What page gets the most views? How many pages do they visit per session? Or do they leave right away? Analyzing data from multiple sources allows you to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how consumers interact with your brand.
Audience engagement is an important metric for marketers and can be measured in a multitude of ways: likes, comments, shares, mentions, etc. A great way to see which posts are fostering the most engagement is to look back on your analytics for the month/quarter/year and filter the results by most interactions. Make note of the top five performing social posts and find common attributes. Is your audience responding to hashtags (which ones)? What does the comment section look like? After identifying similarities within your top posts, adjust your content strategy accordingly to boost engagement.
Related Post: 10 Easy Metrics To Determine The King Of Your Content
Is your content lacking on Twitter but thriving on YouTube? Consider eliminating social media platforms that don’t serve your brand. Social media is an incredible free tool, but if a platform is not producing a return on your time and effort, you should concentrate your efforts elsewhere. For more tips on improving your social media ROI, see this article.
Social media metrics can provide crucial information by revealing what content your audience wants to see. Regularly monitoring performance, evaluating results, and revising your strategy accordingly allows you to evolve as a brand— and most importantly, keeps you from losing touch with your audience.
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