Are you finding it hard to track your social media success?
Do you want to look for metrics which can reveal the nitty gritty of any marketing strategy regardless of hard yards put in?
In this post, we will talk about 9 trackable insights which need to be concentrated on, in order to get the most out of any social media marketing approach. The idea here is to analyze the steps comprising of raw data processing, leading to the basics of campaign performances and tactic assessments.
To be precise, we will be concentrating primarily on Twitter and Facebook as these are the most influential social media platforms to work with.
#1. Tracking Followers, Likes and Reactions
This is probably the easiest way to track down the efficacy of a social media marketing campaign. Followers over Twitter and Facebook give a good idea of how the brand or the product is actually resonating with the concerned individuals. A steady growth in the number of fans is a great indicator of your social supremacy— regardless of the platform.
One way to grow the follower base is to offer original and engaging content which might be helpful to your social circle. To begin with, Facebook offers a pretty comprehensive interface for tracking the number of page likes, via the Insights Tab. Apart from the views and likes, you can also see other reactions to your pictures, post and videos— facilitating better evaluation. Constant monitoring is also allowed and it is easy to analyze the loss and gain in the number of likes— over a given timeframe.
Be it the number of followers or the conjured likes for a particular post, Facebook boasts of an updated interface for certain in-depth measurements. Be it looking at the Engagement column for total number of reactions or checking each update individually, this social platform offers a great way of tracking the required set of metrics.
Twitter, on the other hand, shows the exact number of followers on the account page. However, visiting Twitter Analytics can offer additional information— including the 28-day summary, increase or decrease in the number of followers and even the recent industry trends which might be affecting your gains.
Apart from the number of followers, the tweets, retweets and other details can also be looked at for a concrete assessment. Twitter’s engagement column is quite comprehensive and comes with an expansive column of bankable stats— in the form of graphical representations.
#2. Identifying the Perfect Timeframe
On social media, timing is everything. An hour adrift from the sweet spot of engagement can actually cost you a lot of views and even potential customers. The idea here is to tailor a marketing strategy based on the timing of your posts.
Over Facebook, you need to track the daily activity of the follower base, in order to come up with a cohesive time frame. The best approach would be to break down the levels of engagement, on an hourly basis. You need to head over the Insights page and select ‘Posts’. Hovering on a particular post showcases the number of people who are currently online in relation to the same. You can opt for this approach throughout a week— spanning across different timeframes. This way it will be easier to generalize and opt for that perfect time zone where most number of individuals will engage with your post.
Twitter, on the other hand, isn’t descriptive enough when it comes to offering engagement stats. However, you can look for the dwindling engagement levels over a period of 28 days.
#3. Monitoring Mentions
Look out for tags, mentions and every instance where someone from the crowd talks about you or your business. Over Facebook, notifications are sent whenever the concerned name is mentioned. However, Twitter can only offer this flexibility with a third party application.
#4. Delving into Demographics
Any social media marketing plan is incomplete if you aren’t gauging the audience demographics in correlation to the brand. Over Facebook, this can be initiated using the Insights Tab. Head over to People and then the Fans Tab— which then segregates the audience based on demographics.
Twitter comes with built-in analytics which a dedicated Audience tab to work with. Clicking on the same offers a broad overview alongside a peek into the lifestyle, interests and other vital details. However, if you are one of the firms dealing in HD cinema and other forms of online streaming content— paid advertising is certainly one of the best ways advance over Twitter. In that case, demographics can be evaluated using the tab called Brand Hub which shows up automatically for businesses.
#5. Determining Reach
This metric typically suggests the levels of engagement— both within and outside your community. While the quality of the content plays a determining role, both Twitter and Facebook have certain specific ways of tracking the same.
Expectedly, it all starts at the Insights Tab and moves on to the Reach option. There are graphical patterns which showcase the number of viewers and the bottom of that page offers details regarding the reach. This actually suggests how most users came across your brand or business— including the likes of interactions, advertisements, check-ins and other resources.
You can also single out daily posts by accessing Post Reach graphic.
Twitter offers similar set of features via the Tweets tab in the analytics section. There is a dedicated impression column to look at which is a pretty reliable solution towards determining the overall reach.
#6. Reviewing Interactions
If your post goes viral, it will be commented upon— quite incessantly. While the number of comments readily indicates the success of your social media marketing campaign, the nature of the same is actually important for an unbiased evaluation.
The nature of reactions will help you weed out uninteresting content pieces from the editorial schedule. Moreover, it also becomes easy to gauge the customer sentiment, via these comments and replies.
Facebook comes with a dedicated tab for viewing shares, comments and reactions for each post. Be it comment counts or the frequency of interactions, almost everything can be evaluated via this metric.
On Twitter, you can easily count the number of replies but to actually look at those requires you to click on the Tweets Tab. Top Tweets and even the usual ones can be viewed directly underneath the graph and clicking on the same reveals the engagement levels.
#7. Identifying Shared Content
Another aspect of social media marketing is the number of shares; each post is getting. Content creation is useless unless it reaches people via shares and referrals. If a post is frequently shared, the content strategy is actually up to the mark.
On Facebook, there is an option to view the number of shares for each post while on Twitter this actually stands for retweets.
#8. Tracking Referral Traffic
It is important to know how the traffic clusters are shaping up from social to website. This is where tracking referral traffic becomes important. The actual job of your social media marketing plan is to bring in usable click-throughs for the website which can also be converted into campaigns and CTAs.
Google Analytics helps determine the referral traffic for your marketing campaigns via Acquisition tab and then the Social option. Upon addressing Social, you need to click on Network Referrals or Overview for getting hold of the real values like page views, session count duration and a lot more.
#9. Examining Click Rates
This last metric actually revolves around the concept of conversions. Evaluating click rates are important as they reveal the number of engaged followers, means of engagement and a few other vital insights.
Facebook boasts of an expansive tracking system and one can reach out to each post via the Insights Tab. Clicking on Actions reveal different elements like website, call to action, directions and a host of other necessary details— based on demographics.
On twitter, it is mostly about tracking retweets or using third party resources for identifying click links.
Bottom-Line
If you are an entrepreneur, you must concentrate on brand performance above anything else. However, evaluating the audience metrics is the key precursor of any marketing strategy— irrespective of the platform. Therefore, it is imperative that we concentrate more on targeted content and the social metrics for determining the fate of the social marketing approach.
