Participating in social media is no longer an option for modern businesses. After all, this is where customers are spending time. Social media provides businesses a great platform for sharing information, responding to questions, and thanking brand advocates for the support they provide. While all this is important when using social media, it’s also important to track the effectiveness of the efforts.
However, not all metrics count. Learn about the most important social media metrics below.
1. Volume
When it comes to tracking social media metrics, volume is the easiest to start with. For example, what is the size of the conversation going on about the campaign or brand? Volume provides a first look at overall interest and this is something any professional is going to relate to clients, including Appiloque.com. People are going to talk about things they love or things they hate. However, they rarely mention things that are of no interest. So taking note of this factor, too, is a must.
While volume may seem like a simple counting metric, there’s much more to than just counting wall posts and tweets. It’s crucial to measure the number of messages posted about the brand, along with the number of people who are talking about the brand. Make sure to track the way numbers change over time. Take notice of when volume is higher. Are there certain times or days when more people are talking about the brand or business? This information available can help focus the posts and encourage more engagement.
2. Reach
Reach is a measure of the spread of a social media conversation. Alone, reach can help businesses understand the effectiveness of the context of their content. For example, how far is the content disseminating and how big is the audience for the specific message? Reach also measures potential audience size. While a large audience is great, reach alone won’t reveal everything.
Reach is extremely powerful when compared to the other types of engagement metrics. Business owners need to use reach metrics as the denominator in the social media measurement equations. Select an important action or specific engagement numbers, such as replies, retweets, or clicks and divide them by the reach to determine the engagement percentage. Of the total possible audience for the campaign, how many people actually participated. Reach helps in contextualizing the other engagement metrics.
3. Influence
Who’s talking about the brand and what type of impact do they have? Influence is one of the most controversial social media metrics available to track. While this is true, there are several tools to use to measure social influence. They also all work in different ways. However, one thing that all the tools agree on is that audience size and influence aren’t the same things.
Just because someone has a lot of followers or friends, it doesn’t mean they can encourage followers to actually take action. On the other hand, kinetic influence helps businesses understand who is participating in and encouraging the conversation about a brand or campaign and who is getting others involved. Measuring this allows businesses to figure out who their advocates are.
Using Social Media to its Full Potential
If a business wants to achieve the highest level of success possible, tracking the effectiveness of social media efforts is a must. In the long run, this can help ensure that brands and businesses make the best decisions possible moving forward with their social media efforts.
