This post was written by Sean Doherty, one of our Account Executives.
So your business is on Social Media, but what now? Is it even working? Aside from new fans or followers, which are important, there are so many statistics out there that it can be daunting to know what means what. Learning the important metrics is vital to the success of your social media efforts. Here’s 4 of the most important figures that will help you understand and improve your social media marketing.
Engagement
The first step is making sure the content is engaging. As a business it’s crucial that you post content that is tailored to your fan base. Overall, these stats make up an engagement percentage, but I want to delve into each and describe what they mean and how it will affect your business.
Likes, Comments, & Favorites
Across all platforms there is some kind of tool that allow users to show their appreciation for a post. For platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you have likes, and on Twitter you have favorites. Each one has a similar meaning, which is that they found this post interesting. As your posts receive more likes or favorites, the social platform is able to gather more demographic information about users who are engaging with you.
Retweets, Repins, Regrams, & Shares
While likes, comments, and favorites are the first level of engagement with your social posts, receiving a retweet, repin, regram, or share is an even more significant level of engagement. When a user “re” posts your content to their own person page/feed, they’re now sharing your content with all of their fans, friends, or followers. This type of engagement boosts the amount of users who see your post significantly. When your content is regularly receiving retweets or shares, it can be a good indicator as to what type of content your target markets respond positively to.
Clicks
Clicks are measured when you post some sort of link on your social platforms. Ideally, you want to track how many people press on the link, especially if it’s to your website, and clicks does that. I will go more in depth about clicks later on when discuss Google Analytics but it’s an important statistic to know when looking into your engagement
Reach
Your content may be engaging, but do you know how many people it’s reaching? Simply put, Reach is the number of users that have seen your post. Since Facebook is the most popular platform I’ll break it down using that as an example There are actually three forms of reach that Facebook measures, Organic, Paid, and Viral. Organic Reach is the number of people who saw your posts without any paid advertising towards it. Paid Reach is the number of people who saw your post due to paid advertising in the form of a boosted post or sponsored post. Lastly, there is Viral Reach, which is often overlooked. Viral Reach is the number of people who saw your post due to Facebook friends sharing the post. In a sense, Viral Reach is most important since if your Viral Reach is high, you know your fans are engaged in your content so much so that they are sharing it with their friends as well.
Impressions
It can be easy to confuse Impressions with Reach, however these two metrics are a bit different. While reach measures how many people saw a post, impressions measure how many times your post was displayed. Like reach, impressions is broken down by organic, paid, and viral. Impressions are important because you need to know how many times your posts are being shown online. If it’s high, then great, but if not there’s something wrong with your content and adjustments have to be made.
Conversions
Businesses use social media for many things, but just like any marketing tool, they want to use it for leads and sales. There are some ways to track leads that are very important for you to understand. When tracking leads to your website, it’s all about using Google Analytics. Google Analytics allows you track all the website traffic your receiving, whether it be from paid search, SEO, or social media. It’s important to set up goals, especially if it’s an e-commerce website, where you’ll be able to determine where purchasing customers are coming from and focus marketing efforts towards that specific funnel.
What if my customers call me instead of visit my website? Companies like ResponseTap gives you the ability to set up a tracking phone number that you can list on social media platforms that is redirected to your regular phone line. The programs will track call information and provide reports as to how many of your calls came from your social media posts. Both tools are crucial for understanding the amount of leads and conversions you’re receiving from social media
Have any other social media metrics that you think belong on the list? Leave them in the comments below and let’s discuss!