Measuring Social Media Success (Part 1)

So you have social media profiles, followers and you are on your way to social media success. So how do you know If you’re doing a good job? There are certain metrics that you need to measure that will tell the tale. The first set of Social media metrics to measure are:

Likes, Shares, Comments, Retweets, Mentions and Favorites

Retweets are your Tweets forwarded by people who follow you to their own 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 can become a part of your primary network if they come back and follow you.

mentions

@ followed by username is a way to tag/mention people in a post

Mentions refers to any Tweets in which your Twitter handle, or any keyword you are tracking, is used. When you have a high number of mentions, your Twitter audience is telling you that you are adding value with the content you are sharing.

Favorites mean that someone has marked your post as one of their favorite Tweets. That post then gets added to the user’s list of favorite Tweets and is
open for anyone to see.

Likes are a way for people to show that they find what you posted interesting.

Comments left by users are a direct way for people to engage with your posts and start a conversation. Comments are great to track customer feedback and insight to your customer’s perspective, opinions and even suggestions, especially if your posts ask open ended questions.

Shares take your content to the next level by spreading it across networks that you are not directly connected to. This allows you to increase social media engagement and brand awareness.

 

 

There are several tools that measure these metrics, that we will cover in another post, but you can get these statistics from the platforms themselves through their native analytics20140812-144010-52810966.jpg

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Social Media Metrics Explained

Social Media Marketing is never easy. You dont just click some buttons to create a profile and just start posting. You can post great content but if no one see it or  interacts with it, the essentially it is useless…like the proverbial tree falling in a forest. There is an intricate science to being effective. As with all things marketing, there are ways to measure efficacy in social media. The terminology, however can be very daunting to the Social Media Newbie. We are here to explain what these terms mean before we can move out to explaining how we make things work:

computer reachFans Reached.

This is the average number of fans who receive your content. This is different from your actual number of fans/ likes…here is why:  Facebook shares your content with a small percentage of fans unless you have a very engaged community. The key to increasing this figure is having a community that comments, likes or shares your posts. Facebook then ramps up your Edgerank, which increases your reach.

Quick Tip: (One of the main reasons is that most people don’t see your posts and some posts may not resonate with your audience, so you need to post frequently to figure out what works for your fan base.)

Engagement

dialog boxes

Engagement: Who started or joined the conversation

This is the average percentage of users who’ve seen your post and then either liked, commented, shared or clicked on the post. This is why it increases your metrics when you share “Clickable content such as videos/ polls etc).  If you focus on increasing this figure, it will help your Page significantly.

People Talking About. ( PTAT ) This is similar to engagement, but doesn’t include people who clicked on the post, so it will always be lower than engagement.

Negative Feedback

Face it: There will be people that wont  like your brand anymore for various reasons. This metric is the average percentage of users who gave negative feedback by hiding a single post, hiding all Page posts or reporting a post as spam.

Quick Tip: Know your audience and always be appropriate

Viral Reach

This is when people who are not fans get to see the content you shared. This could be because the content gets shared out by your fans to their friends.

Organic Reach

This is the average percentage of fans and non-fans who see your content when it’s posted.

Click-Through Rate

Click Through

Click Through

This is the average number of people who interacted with your posts by watching a video, clicking on a photo or listening to an audio file.

Impressions

An impression is a measure of the number of times an ad is displayed, whether it is clicked on or not.  Each time an ad displays it is counted as one impression

These are some of the terms that marketers use to measure Social Media efficacy outside of the know metrics such as “fans” “friends” or “likes” Now you can speak intelligently about social media and make an impression.

Social Media Fuse Inc generates analytics reorts for thier clients and give feedback on ths=ese metrics across different platforms. COntact us today for a free Social Media Audit : Info@socialmediafuse.com or visit us on the web at http://www.socialmediafuse.com We would love to hear from you.