If you’re doing social media marketing, then you probably already have our social media planning template, and you’re now spending time posting, sharing, gaining likes – following all the steps that lead to a successful social media strategy. Now it’s time to analyze social media metrics and see how your efforts are paying off.
Measure
If you’re managing a social media account, tracking the numbers from start to finish is important in showing proof of performance and ROI on social media. Updating and tracking each week will help you notice trends and gauge performance. You will learn what your audience prefers, allowing you to tweak your future posts accordingly. Remember, you want to give your audience what they like.
Start by creating a spreadsheet for each separate social media channel and fill in all the current metrics -- including likes, follows, shares, best posts. Then update the information in the spreadsheet each week. (This sample spreadsheet is created specifically for tracking Facebook stats, but can be used for any channel.)
As you can see, from week to week we’re documenting the page likes, shares, comments, and People Talking About This (PTAT - this no longer applies as it was recently removed from Facebook).
Determine your Best Post based on which one generated the most engagement for the week. Note the topic of your best post is what your audience likes, so continue sharing similar content.
The spreadsheet also shows metrics for reach, percent of growth for the week, and the average percent of growth over time. Social media management software can provide more in-depth metrics, these figures were acquired through Hubspot.
Goals and Objectives
It’s important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your brand. The more aware you are, the more effective your benchmarking will be. You should be setting goals and objectives that focus on the areas where your brand needs improvement.
Goals are different from objectives. Goals are more loosely-based and include action. Objectives are well-defined and quantity-based. They are the metrics we would like to see increase, and the numbers we want to track.
Some basic social media goals are:
- Get people to come, stay and participate.
- Boost brand reputation
- Build brand awareness
Objectives may include:
- Number of likes, followers, subscribers
- Number of comments, views, shares
- Number of daily posts
- Percent of engagement
Each social media channel uses different terminology, so plan your goals and objectives accordingly. Here are some examples of aligning goals and objectives for both Facebook and Twitter.
Example 1 Facebook:
Your goal is to see your Likes increase. Your page currently has 721 Likes and you would like to have 1,200 Likes by December. So the objective would be to gain 479 Likes, and achieve this by posting a minimum of three times a week.
Example 2 Twitter:
Your goal is to gain followers, follow more accounts and tweet more. You currently have 268 followers, you’re following 406 and you’ve sent 28 tweets. You would like to have 500 followers, be following 800 accounts and have sent 350 tweets by December. So the objective would be to gain 232 followers by following 398 more accounts and sending 322 more tweets. This will be achieved by tweeting a minimum of three times a day and include one retweet.
Determine if your goals are appropriate. If you find you’re reaching your targets far ahead of time, then your goals are too easy. Look back on the data you’ve collected from your social media analytics and refine. Set them higher but still be realistic. It should take a considerable amount of effort to reach the goals you set.
When you reach your goal date, it’s time to refine, rinse and repeat.
Whether you're measuring the number of new followers in a given time period or matching individual tweets to new contacts in your inbound marketing database, measurement and refinement of your social strategy will bring you long term success.
Topics: marketing