In this digitally-oriented world wherein more than three billion people across the globe are actively using social media every month, businesses know they need to establish an online presence as it is no passing trend.
It’s an essential cornerstone that builds brand awareness and creates a connection with different targeted audiences – from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and even Pinterest boards. It’s also no secret that to facilitate trust between your brand and potential customers, you need to stay active, post relevant content, and respond to questions, follow fans, and more.
Introducing Metrics to Social Media Marketing
Beyond these social interactions, do you know the effectiveness of your engagement in social media? If you want to measure the success of your campaigns, you need to monitor the metrics you set for your social media marketing strategy.
The numbers don’t lie, and it’s the only way to help the marketing team identify whether the social media metrics meet the goals of your objectives in line with the set costs. Of course, measuring your social media metrics go beyond looking at the likes, follows, and shares.
It should include the following fundamental principles that serve as a powerful component in your journey to building a digital empire:
What are the Key Metrics You Need to Monitor For Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?
1. Awareness: Impressions and Reach
One of the primary goals of creating different social media channels is to build a keen branding awareness and perception, which is why monitoring the impressions and reach for your posts should serve as essential benchmarks.
Impressions and reach are often interchanged, but there’s a critical difference between the two. Impressions measure the times your post appears on a person’s timeline, while reach reveals the potential unique viewers you could tap into.
This helps you keep track of your audience’s growth rate, which has a direct impact on your company’s ROI. It’s not all about the total follower count, but how much your posts are reaching to your audience determines your social media momentum.
2. Engagement: Clicks, Comments, Clicks, and Shares
Engagement is another vital metric you need to monitor as it boils down to seeing the percentage and frequency of your audience’s interaction with your account. While engagement is a massive umbrella to unfold, you can break it down into smaller segments such as likes, comments, shares, and clicks.
Seeing as there are different forms of engagement, looking at each one individually will not give you a clear picture of the effectiveness of your strategy. Looking at it as a whole, however, should reveal your audience’s health and whether your posts are relevant or interesting enough for your viewers.
3. ROI: Conversions
Generating organic traffic for your website is one of the primary benefits of establishing a strong social media presence. Conversion is all about highlighting the number of customers who actively purchase from your site through one of your social media channels, be it a product or service. However, inviting them to your page is only half the battle.
You need to have clearly defined goals regarding the conversion of your visitors, especially if you have desired objectives, such as turning viewers into sales.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to use aggressive tactics to push your customers into making an action. Blatant promotions on social media will only hurt your branding as it can turn off your audience, but using assisted social conversions is enough to help you track conversions and analyze if your returning visitors will pay off over time.
Looking at your assisted social conversions in comparison with your direct conversions also help you reveal which social media platforms are suitable for your specific audience, and which are better at landing winning sales.
4. Acquisition: Visitor Frequency Rate
Other than measuring conversions, which refer to active customers, you also need to look at your referrals. They determine how many of your audience that come from one of your social media networks visit your website.
Using tools like Google Analytics allows you a full overview of the referral traffic you get from your social media channels, its percentage, and the frequency rates of your returning visitors. You can also easily compare and optimize your new to your returning visitors, which should help you analyze the impact of your engagement on various social media networks.
More new visitors indicate your brand awareness is growing while returning visitors determine the strength of your social media marketing.
5. Activity: Response Rate and Time
Measuring your social media metrics doesn’t just involve focusing on your performance, but taking a closer look at the impact of your brand with your audience’s experience.
Having a full overview of the response time and rate between your social media managers and customers helps you reveal if your team is doing their job, providing unique, engaging, and quality customer care. It also shows areas that need improvement, allowing you to know whether or not you are meeting your response time goals.
Conclusion: The Importance of Tracking Your Social Media Metrics for Your Bottom Line
The metrics shown above are some of the essential sectors you need to observe to improve your social media strategy. Still, other factors like measuring your bounce rate, click-through rate, and potential reach are also part of your core metrics. However, they were not included in the list as they are the least helpful when it comes to social media metrics.
With that being said, metrics play a pivotal role in your bottom line as it helps track whether your social media campaign or strategy is meeting its objectives. More importantly, it shows the cost-effectiveness of your social media strategy, allowing you to look at areas that need improvement – from engagement, referrals, reach, conversions, to response rate and time.
Combining all the essential metrics will give you a full overview of your performance, which leaves more room for you to include specific and nuanced tactics that can further improve your bottom line.
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