Social media is a powerful communications tool – but only if it’s used correctly. That’s why it’s important to monitor your social media activity regularly, to ensure that you’re staying on track and not veering off into uncharted territory. But what should you be tracking? Here are five essential metrics to help you get started.
Engagement Rates
Engagement rates show you how many people are interacting with your content and can be a valuable metric for gauging the success of your social media campaigns. Analysing your business’ engagement rates is important as it shows you how many people are connecting with your brand and how often. To calculate your engagement rate, simply take the number of interactions (likes, comments, shares, etc.) and divide it by the number of followers you have. This will give you a percentage that you can use to compare different pieces of content or different campaigns over time.
Click-Through Rates
Click-through rates (CTRs) measure how many people who see your content click on it. This metric is most used in email marketing, but it can also be applied to social media – for example, if you include links to landing pages or blog posts in your tweets or Facebook posts. To calculate your CTR (Click through rates), simply take the number of clicks and divide it by the number of impressions (the number of times your content was seen).
Referral Traffic
Referral traffic measures the number of people who visit your website after seeing a link to it on social media. This metric is a valuable way to gauge how effective your social media presence is in driving traffic to your website. To track referral traffic from social media, simply look at your website’s referrer logs (most web analytics tools will include this data). Alternatively, you can also use Google Analytics Social Reporting features.
Sales Leads or Conversions
If you’re using social media for business purposes, then chances are you’re looking to generate leads or make sales. In this case, tracking the number of sales leads or conversions that can be attributed to social media is a valuable metric. There are a few different ways to do this – for example, you could include unique promo codes in each social media campaign and then track how many people use those codes when making a purchase.
Amplification rate
The amplification rate measures how much reach your content has – in other words, how far it spreads across the social web. To calculate your amplification rate, simply take the number of shares and divides it by the number of impressions (again, this data is available in most web analytics tools). The amplification rate is a valuable metric because it shows you how viral your content is – which can help gauge which types of content perform best on social media. Essentially, the higher your amplification rate, the more willing your followers are to associate themselves with your brand.
On a Final Note
There are a lot of different metrics that you could track when monitoring your social media activity – but these five are a good place to start. By tracking engagement rates, click-through rates, referral traffic levels, sales leads/conversions, and amplification rates, you’ll get a well-rounded view of how well your social media campaigns are performing – and where there’s room for improvement.
If you need some assistance to target those areas for improvement, DigiTLC have your back. As a professional digital marketing company, we can thoroughly analyse and target areas of your social media marketing strategy – whether it’s increasing your business’ social media engagement, planning a more consistent posting schedule, or learning effective SEO tactics – we have the skills to build a stronger relationship between your business and audience.
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