Let’s face it. It is much harder to read the tea leaves than it is to count them. But, for small businesses to maximize their momentum on social media, that’s just what they must do, for the number of friends, followers, fans, connections, and likes is by no means an elixir for leads, conversions, sales and return on investment. It is important to understand the secrets of social and what matters most in social media metrics.
A Klear.com article, The Only 3 Social Media Metrics You Should Measure, reels you in with an intentionally deceiving headline, but provides a crystal clear direction for building a measurement plan. Here are a few highlights.
Numbers Can Be Deceiving
Growing numbers are nice and all, but they can also be a very misleading metric.
Imagine you’ve launched a campaign that targets the wrong audience. It was (allegedly) a huge success in fan base growth but unfortunately the newcomers were totally irrelevant to your actual target audience. They might have liked your campaign’s witty creatives but are not part of the community you are trying to build.
… Social media is about people, so always measure who that audience is. Do they match your target persona? Are they influential in your space?
Compare & Conquer
Benchmarking performance is the way to be sure not only that your content is doing fine compared to others, but also that your growth exceeds them.
Monitoring brands in your space helps also in building a more competitive social strategy. With a smart comparison analysis, you can plan how often you should be posting and in which channels, when should you post to get maximum engagement, and also figure out what content would have the largest potential to work best with your target audience.
But don’t stop at tracking your direct competitors – monitor also the indirect players in your space which you can learn from.
Spotlight the Outliers
In addition to tracking the total accumulations, you should pay special attention to the min-max points, as these also hold tremendous learning value. …
It’s perfectly natural to be puzzled about what you’re looking for, as it is the unexpected. Did a small campaign effort yield amazing results? Did an influencer bash your brand and no one responded? Did a competitor take part in a major industry event you weren’t even aware of?
Read The Only 3 Social Media Metrics You Should Measure at Klear.com.
The 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, published by Social Media Examiner, is a great reference for how marketers are using social media to grow their businesses. What’s surprising in the survey is that while 92 percent of marketers indicated that they participate in social media to generate exposure for their businesses – they may very well miss out on crucial opportunities and be misled by what truly counts in social media metrics. Jay Baer, marketing consultant, speaker, founder of Convince and Convert, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Youtility, puts it this way and shares some real truths about social media metrics in the video that follows:
Social media metrics can be both a blessing and a curse – don’t let the numbers fool you. Take advantage of actionable insight to maximize your marketing momentum. How do you use your social media metrics? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.
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