Sometimes social media marketing can seem like a stab in the dark. Are those Facebook likes really sending customers to your website? Like any marketing strategy, you need to analyze the data in order to see if something is really working. In the past few years, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become much better about sharing meaningful stats. Now is a great time to analyze that information in order to see what has worked and what hasn't. Armed with this data, you'll be ready to craft a strategy that will take your social media marketing to the next level. Although there are various details you can see in your social media analytics, we recommend paying close attention to the following metrics.
1. Likes and unlikes Find it in Insights under the Likes tab The Net Likes graph will give you data on how many likes and unlikes your page has received during any given date. Pay attention to dates that show spikes in likes or unlikes. Check what you posted on those days, or if you even posted at all, to decide if there is a correlation. Have you been promoting your Facebook page in email newsletters or ads recently? The Net Likes graph is where you'll find data to tell you whether or not those promotions are working. Most importantly, Likes tells you how many people are subscribed to your posts and want to see content that your company is posting. 2. Post reach Find it in Insights under Reach or in the All Posts Published chart under the Posts tab The amount of people your posts reach has a direct effect on the amount of engagement your posts receive. In a perfect world, your posts would reach the total number of people who are following your Page. In Facebook land, however, reach depends on several different factors and, more often than not, your posts will not reach all of your fans. In order to increase your reach, you have to pay for it. These two tabs will give you helpful information on how much paid reach you have received versus organic reach. 3. Engagement Find it in Insights under the table All Posts Published in the Posts tab In my opinion, engagement is one of the most important metrics to check regularly. This data tells you how many people are interacting with your posts through liking, commenting, or sharing. A like or comment means you've grabbed someone's attention long enough for them to interact with your post - not an easy thing to do these days! Take note of the posts that received the most engagement. You'll want to include more of these type posts in your 2016 strategy.
1. Mentions Find it in Analytics under each month's summary Mentions tell you how many people are talking about your brand on Twitter. Check out each of these tweets and ask yourself "Why are they mentioning me?" Is it because they had a great experience with your company? Do they have a complaint? Social media is basically a conversation with your fans and Mentions breaks down how those conversations are going. Twitter also highlights your Top Mention each month so you can see which one received the most impressions. Find this data on your Twitter Analytics home page. 2. Link clicks Find it in Analytics under Tweet Activity This will tell you how often your fans are clicking on the links in your tweets. Not only does it give you an idea of how many people are engaging with your tweets, but it is also a good way to judge your success if you are trying to send folks to a particular place (your website, a sign-up page, a blog post, etc). 3. Retweets Find it in Analytics under Engagements A retweet means someone has shared your tweet, exposing it to a whole new audience. It also means your fans are enjoying your posts. Pay close attention to how often your tweets get retweeted, as well as which tweets get retweeted. This will give you useful information on what type of tweets perform the best and how many potential fans are being exposed to your content.
1. Engagement Find it under Analytics in the Updates table LinkedIn sums up the engagement on each individual post by dividing the number of interactions, clicks, and followers acquired by the number of impressions. As a rule of thumb, a good engagement rate on LinkedIn is anything higher than 0.05%. To dig deeper into your engagement data, scroll down to the Engagement graph to see if this rate has improved over the course of time. 2. Follower Demographics Find it in Analytics under Followers This is a great metric to check out if you want more information on who is following your company Page. You are able to see the particular industries that your followers are in, their company size, job function, and more. All of this information can be used to craft future posts that will be relevant and interesting to your followers. 3. How you compare Find it in Analytics under Followers Based on your company's industry, LinkedIn compares your Page's following to similar companies in your area so you can see how you measure up. This is good to check out every once in awhile because it gives you a good benchmark for how many followers your page should have. You may find that you have more followers than most companies in your industry or that you are lagging behind. Use this data to set goals for the coming year.
Are there any particular metrics you check regularly?
