How do you measure social? If you’re a social media marketer, it’s pretty much guaranteed that your boss has asked you to provide results showcasing your efforts. You might have initially been baffled as to how you would measure values such as awareness, what your customers think of your brand, or how your efforts are impacting the bottom line, but thankfully this is where Website KPI metrics, come to the rescue.
Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.
In recognizing valuable KPIs, you can track not only your successes but campaigns that perhaps missed the mark. And there are many bad KPIs out there that will waste your time. But there are also many good website KPIs and KPI website examples to consider. Let’s move ahead.
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In monitoring and measuring your KPIs, you can focus your attention and efforts to optimize all of your resources to those most valuable to your organization. However, it can be difficult to know where to start when wanting to zero in on your social media measurement strategy, so to help you know what to look for, we’ve rounded up a list of suggested KPIs to avoid unless you like wasting your time. However some you can tailor to suit your business goals.
For marketers, there are few skills more important than a deep understanding of Google Analytics and its conversion measurement capabilities.
After all, this is the tool that tells you whether your efforts are translating into results.
“Vanity metrics” (friends, followers, “likes”) are the most common metrics marketers use to measure the business impact of social media. Ones at the top of the list to avoid.
Just 14% of marketers tie vanity metrics to sales levels, and it is no wonder.
I get it. Seeing your follower count grow and grow and getting a lot of likes on Facebook feels great. But that is where it stops.
Learn to avoid these: 17 Disastrous Myths of Innovation You Must Beware
Other areas to skip over …
KPI website design.KPI metrics … social media presence
The first area you want to examine and measure is your brand or organization’s social media presence. How prominently does your company appear on social? How many people are talking about your organization, product, or service? These questions can all be answered by taking a look at the following KPIs. Just in very little depth.
Number of mentions
A mention is “the act of tagging another user’s handle or account name in a social media message.” In measuring the number of mentions your brand is getting on social media, you can not only monitor conversations surrounding your company but get a good indication of your company’s overall reach.
Inbound links
This is about the number of links back to your blog or website you are getting from quality references. As Vital explains, “Link building should be a cornerstone of your SEO strategy. When someone links to your website it means you’re building your street cred within your given industry.”
Hubspot echoes these sentiments, explaining that marketers must “keep track of your average inbound links so you can keep tabs on the quality of your content (more important than ever in the eyes of Google) and thus, your inbound links’ impact on your search authority.”
KPI examples … Social Media Engagement
Numbers reflecting your social media presence are valuable. However, knowing how engaged your audience says a lot more about the success of your social media campaign. The following KPIs offer insight into your engagement levels and will also reveal areas where you could improve.
Retweets
Retweets are “your Tweets forwarded by people who follow you to their network of followers. This gives you the opportunity to reach more people who may think your content is valuable. That new network of Twitter users who are exposed to your Tweets have the potential to become a part of your primary network if they come back and follow you.” Vanity, right?
Comments
While pretty self-explanatory, comments are messages and feedback left by other users and a great way of tracking your audience’s general sentiment and feedback.
KPI template dashboard … social media reach and influence
If a social media post doesn’t get a single like, does it still exist? Your message could be the most beautifully crafted piece of content on the face of the planet, but if nobody’s there to witness or engage with it, you are missing out on great opportunities for growth and reach. But good and bad ways to measure.
The following important KPIs will help you measure these areas, but will they ensure that your content doesn’t go unnoticed?
Share of voice
The share of voice is a metric for understanding how many social media mentions a particular brand is receiving about its competition. Usually measured as a percentage of total mentions within an industry or among a defined group of competitors.”
Sentiment
“An attempt to understand how an audience feels about a brand, company, or product based on data collected from social media. It typically involves the use of natural language processing or another computational method to identify the attitude contained in a social media message.
Different analytics platforms classify sentiment in a variety of ways, which confounds this measure. For example, some use ‘polar’ classification (positive or negative sentiment), while others sort messages by emotion or tone (Contentment/Gratitude, Fear/Uneasiness, etc.).”
Post reach
This is the number of users who see a specific social media post.
Here is a text with some awesome examples: Book Synopsis: Exploring New Age Marketing … Learning from Examples
KPI metrics … Action and ROI
Once your content is out there, it’s important to measure whether your social media efforts are resulting in your desired outcomes. What are the actions you want your audience to complete, upon seeing your message? What are your business goals and objectives?
While having users see your message in the first place is half the battle, it’s imperative that you see tangible results from your strategy. These KPIs offer ways to measure whether your messages are making their mark. Are they valuable … not to us.
Issues resolved
If one of your business objectives is to improve customer service through social media, a great way to measure the progress here is through the number of issues your organization resolves. As Visually explains, “More people are turning to social media channels for issue resolution than ever before.
In fact, 72 percent of customers expect complaints made on Twitter to be answered in an hour. Collect data on how people come to you for help or troubleshooting to make sure the busiest channels are monitored and staffed appropriately.”
Internal KPIs
While it may be tempting to concentrate on the KPIs determined by your customers and audience, your organization’s internal measurement tactics are just as important. Recognizing the output of your employees and business overall makes it easier to leverage your resources and keep track of where time and energy are being devoted.
In having an overall perspective of what your content team is producing, you have a much better chance of streamlining the process and offering your audience both quality and consistency.
Blog posts
If a blog is a part of your content strategy, take a look at how many blog posts you or your team is producing per week. It’s important to take into account how many hours go into the creation of a single blog post, and how many of these your brand is posting per week. What are the returns being seen on each blog post?
Consider all of these factors when determining whether your team is concentrating on the most effective strategies. But remember it is quality over quantity.
Social media budget
This is probably one of the KPIs most important to your manager. You will obviously want to set goals and keep a close eye on how much budget you are setting aside for social media. If you find that you are spending more than you or your boss would like, our blog post on how to decrease your social media budget can provide some guidance.
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Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics that relate to improving the performance of business. Go to Amazon to obtain a copy of his latest book, Exploring New Age Marketing. It focuses on using the best examples to teach new age marketing … lots to learn. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn
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More reading on social media mistakes from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
KPI Metrics … The Website Performance Indicators You Must Avoid
Content Development Strategy … SEO Mistakes that Will Kill You
10 Social Media and Business Marketing Killers
17 Cardinal Sins to Avoid in a Social Response Strategy
13 Social Media Marketing Trends Sure to Reduce Business