3 Key Factors in Social Media Performance Evaluation
Since its inception, social media has developed rapidly to become an online marketing game-changer. It offers some valuable advantages compared with other advertising channels. First of all, it is an incredibly rich source of user data, making it an exceptional tool for targeting users. Some companies treat is as a full-fledged platform for brand launch and further promotion. Overall, social media is an important driver for increasing reach and ROI.
The question is this: how do you know that you are doing social media marketing right? Above all, you need to focus on the following criteria: engagement, reach, and conversion. Below, you will find a brief guide to make the most out of these metrics.
3 Key Social Media KPIs to Monitor
1. Engagement
Engagement is of utmost importance. It defines the performance of the rest of social media KPIs. It comprises the number of likes, shares, comments, and brand mentions. For Facebook and Twitter, high engagement reflects the popularity of the content. As a result, more users see your updates in their news feeds. When monitoring engagement, leverage the following metrics: clicks, likes, shares, comments, brand mentions, active followers, and profile visits. They reflect the general attitude of users towards your content. This can be ignorance, neutrality, interest, dislike, or commitment.
In case you have large reach with low engagement, there must be something wrong with your content. It does not properly resonate with the audience. Try to change your approach, test various titles and visuals.
2. Reach
Another thing to keep in mind is visibility. The more visible your content, the more eyeballs it gets. Depending on your target audience, make sure to use relevant social media platforms. To measure reach, you need to monitor the number of followers, impressions, and traffic data. Followers are people willing to see your content on a regular basis. The more followers you have, the better. As Global Web Index data shows, 37% of online users follow their favorite brands on social media. Impressions display how many times your posts actually showed up in the news feed. The number of impressions grows if someone liked or shared your post in their timeline (taking Facebook for instance). However, users could potentially see it but not click on it. For this reason, it is pretty hard to make accurate calculations. Traffic data is the percentage of actual traffic coming to your site from social media platforms. If the number is high, your marketing campaign is going well.
3. Conversion
Social media is an effective lead generation tool. Back in 2016, Inc. 500 executives forecasted social media to have the biggest potential for increasing sales over the next year. Picture the following scenario: the content you post gets huge engagement with zero leads and minimum traffic. Although it is a pleasure to know that people like your product, your primary objective is supposed to be conversion. It could be filling out a registration form, email subscription, downloading an app, installing a widget, or any other desired action depending on your KPIs. The ultimate conversion is user buying a product. However, a good deal of your followers could simply enjoy the content, having no intention to buy from you. There is nothing wrong with it. Your task is to convert the right people into leads. To do it, make sure that your message is clear to everyone.
With a proper campaign, social media is a treasure trove of business opportunities. To evaluate your performance, pay attention to the metrics laid out above, as they will help you reveal drawbacks of your marketing strategy. As the common saying goes, there is always room for improvement.