Social media is evolving at an incredible pace. Measuring the success of your posts is a critical component of social media marketing. It’s important to check your analytics regularly to spot trends and see what’s working and what’s not.
Social media metrics are the statistics and other data you can pull from your social media channels that are indicators of your marketing performance.
In this article, we’ll talk about a few metrics that are strong indicators of a working social media strategy.
1. Volume of mentions
Volume of mentions tell you how compelling and interesting your content is. While looking at volume of mentions you’ll get a general idea on how often people are talking about your brand.
Measuring the volume of mentions over time helps spot any seasonal changes in interest. Maybe there’s a time of year when you could reach potential customers more easily and deliver better results?
There might be spikes in interest for your product throughout the year. For example, in the ecommerce industry we can expect a spike in interest around Black Friday.
Potential customers probably conduct a research around the tools they would like to buy during Black Friday madness. Based on the volume of mentions metric we should invest a bit more in promotion a month before Black Friday.
The volume of mentions is the social media metric on which you’ll base your social media analysis. Other metrics will give you context necessary to make the most informed decisions.
2. Sentiment
Sentiment will tell you whether the talk around your brand (the volume of mentions) is positive, negative or neutral.
This social media metric is especially useful when you’re running a social media campaign.
Initially, a high volume of mentions might suggest that the campaign is a success. After all, people are talking about your brand.
But that’s not the whole picture.
A high volume of mentions and prevailing negative sentiment is a call for trouble. It means that social media crisis is on its way and you have to implement your social media crisis plan into action.
3. Social media reach
Social media reach is a social media metric you should follow closely, especially if you’re running a social media marketing campaign. Social media reach will tell you how many people have seen your posts and how the content is spreading across social media.
Moreover, reach indicates the size of your desired audience. You can assume that social media users are interested in your message and, possibly, product.
The highest social media reach, the biggest audience could have seen your product.
From a technical point of view, measuring the social media reach is a piece of cake.
All you have to do, is come up with a dedicated hashtag and set up a social media monitoring project with the hashtag as a keyword. And that’s it!
4. Number and type of interactions
To be successful on social media, your content needs to ignite discussions and tempt users to have some kind of interaction. Social media algorithms, which take into account whose content to show first on a timeline, take into account the number and type of interactions on your social media account.
In other words, the more comments, likes and shares your posts have, the more people will see your content and the bigger exposure you’ll have.
5. Influencers
Influencer marketing sparks a love – hate relationship among marketers. The surge in negative comments about influencers is caused mainly by lack of research and basing the decisions on faulty premises.
Combine the influencer score with sentiment analysis (just to make sure you’re not going to work with someone who ignites a lot of controversy and negative emotions) and you’re ready to conquer the world of influencer marketing.
When do social media metrics become valuable?
Collecting social media metrics isn’t a guarantee of success. But if you track your social media metrics consistently, you will have a ton of actionable insights that will help you measure and improve your social media presence.
Information is power, and the more you know about your social media activities, the better decisions you can make.
Knowing the performance of your social media activity will also help you benchmark against your social media competitors. That way you can exploit your competitors’ weaknesses, examine their strengths and gain new customers.
Eli Daniel-Wilson
Head, Digital Media & Innovations
Global Media Alliance
LinkedIn: Eli Daniel-Wilson
