Important Social Media Metrics You Need to Track During Research
Publishing content online can easily generate a lot of spreadsheets or data during research. Creators always keep looking for ways to evaluate loads of information available to understand how content is received by readers and acted upon. When data gets bigger, more complex and social, you need to assume that some of this information is vital for your business operations. In order to improve the quality of your content, you need to understand consumer behavior.
Due to the prominence of social media, you’re always engaged with your potential and existing customers. You post regularly and try to understand how they behave to your content. The most important factor that you need to consider while posting content online is whether you’re posting it correctly. It will determine if you get optimal results for your business or not. The trick is to understand some social media metrics.
You need to identify what social data is relevant for your business. Moreover, you need to find out what this data actually means. There are some effective metrics, tools and services to help you identify and understand your business’ social data. The general rule is to seek out rates and simple metrics. You also need to emphasize on simple totals and counts regarding your social media strategy. In this post, we’ve discussed five important social media marketing metrics you need to track during your research.
Reach – Reach allows you to track your Audience Growth Rate. Tracking this metric will connect your business profits with social media data. Some related metrics include total number of followers and Audience Growth. Fortunately, useless aggregated metrics like People Talking About XXX’ on Facebook are gradually disappearing. In fact, they’re being replaced with specific categories. Thus, it’s high time you pay a lot of attention to your Audience Growth Rate.
Audience Growth Rate can help you evaluate your marketing efforts over a particular period of time. Moreover, it does not distract you with irrelevant information like your total number of followers. Audience Growth Rate allows you to compare sophisticated marketing campaigns you’ve been using with your growth-hacking efforts. It will also tell what kind of events match with your highest growth-rate periods.
Engagement – Average Engagement Rate is another important metric you need to track. It will make your overall engagement numbers a lot more meaningful for your business. Some related metrics include reach, Audience Growth Rate and overall engagement. When your Audience Growth Rate improves, you need to make sure you’re speaking to relevant people. In fact, those people should be listening to whatever you’re saying.
With Average Engagement Rate, you can check the basics of your existing network. You can also understand how your various social media strategies and efforts are performing with this established customer base. Average Engagement Rate can effectively compare your follower base with posts’ engagement. Once again, it is worth mentioning that numbers like favorites, likes and shares are quite easy to achieve, but you need to pay a lot of attention to your Audience Engagement Rate. It will help you highlight the most loyal followers amidst a database of numerous individuals.
Acquisition – Another metric you need to track is Visitor Frequency Rate. It will help you optimize your targeting strategy regarding new and existing visitors. Some related metrics include Impressions from various social networks and Click-through rate. In order to track Visitor Frequency Rate, you can use tools like Google Analytics. It will help you track specific site referral traffic from your social media profile. This will provide information about percentage of overall referrals coming through social media. It will also help you determine the frequency of your visitors.
Every goal achiever in the world of social media tracks Visitor Frequency Rate. It helps you understand return and new visitors. These two groups and their behaviors are extremely important to develop a sound social media strategy. The number of your return visitors will determine the depth and strength of your social media efforts. Similarly, new visitors will confirm your audience and reach metrics.
Conversion – This metric is about Assisted Social Conversions. It will also connect your business’ profits with data acquired from social media. A related metric is Last Click Conversions. Although it is very important to attract more visitors to your website and make them return, you also need to define specific goals about turning these return visitors into sales. It is also important to understand that trying too hard to push sales on social media would mean losing your audience.
Assisted Social Conversions can show the exact value of your social media efforts to build influence and trust on social networks. When you define conversion goals on tools like Google Analytics, you will be able to follow various visitors referred through different social channels. You will also be able to track their specific conversions over a certain period of time. You can also compare Last Click Conversions with Assisted Social Conversions to identify which social profiles are much better at bringing back existing customers and making a sale.
Activity – Last but not the least, you need to track Customer Service Savings. It will help you understand the overall impact of your business on the audience. Some related metrics include Social Media Posts and Customer Service Costs. You need to consider a lot of factors beyond content types and post counts to connect your profits with actual social media activity. In order to understand Customer Service Savings, you should combine various data related to your business with social media data.
It is worth mentioning that your total savings from your social media efforts will equal the average time your employees need to complete conventional customer service multiplied with per hour cost of customer service. If you consider what you’ll be saving on a regular basis, it will be a huge amount. Such social media analytics can help you with strategic planning of your social media efforts.
A business owner should view every social media metric with a lens regarding overall business objectives and goals. You need to evaluate these metrics on the basis of your performance while pursuing these goals. In time, you will be able to use this information to make decisions which are better for positioning your brand in the market and earning more profits.
