How to set measurable goals for your social media marketing
Social media is often the first touchpoint a company has with potential a customer and the success of a brand and its most loyal customers normally start at a social media platform.
Social media is growing for each day and having a business being represented on various social media platforms is now essential for any type of corporation. With this rapid growth and with users across several platforms, it can be difficult for marketing managers to know exactly what to pay attention to and how to go about developing a comprehensive social media marketing strategy.
To be successful with social media marketing, marketing managers need to know how to post, what to post and above all, know how to read and analyse social media analytics metrics correctly. There are various metrics that are valuable to track and measure, and in this article, we will describe how you can quantitatively measure your marketing efforts on social media.
In this article, we will be covering which KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to track for various social media marketing channels including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. All these KPIs can be set up and be used in your marketing strategy to measure the success of your different business objectives.
Let’s get started!
Twitter is the place to find out about what’s happening at the moment. It gives everyone the power to create and share ideas instantly. Twitter currently boasts more than 300 million monthly active users, whether they’re interested in music, sports, politics, news, celebrities, or everyday moments.
Content is posted as “tweets” on the platform and are restricted to 140 characters, which makes it a social media platform suitable for quick updates about your brand and other trending topics related to your business. Twitter has the ability to drive traffic that will boost your blog or website via organic search rankings and as well, build brand awareness.
Twitter follower growth
Followers are your raw audience and the number of people following your company over time. Your follower growth metrics gives you indications of how many people that might get exposed to your tweets on Twitter.
If you’re looking to grow your brand awareness and find brand ambassadors that can amplify your message, then this is the Twitter metrics you should be measuring and spend attention to grow over time.
Tweet frequency
Keeping track of how often you tweet and on what time of the day in the week, gives you invaluable insights about when your followers are most receptive for your tweets. Set up tweeting schedules and start measure how the chosen time of a tweet can affect follower growth and engagement metrics.
Twitter reach
Your tweet reach metrics gives you the accurate numbers of Twitter users who was exposed to your tweet. It gives you good indications of how successful a campaign was, compared to the amount of engagement it received.
The more people that was exposed to your brand, the more likely you will find new followers. If you have a brand ambassador with a huge amount of followers, who’s engaging with your tweet, your potential reach will grow.
Tweet engagement
No matter how large your follower growth is, it’s your engagement metrics that counts, those will grow your follower base and increase your brand awareness. There are several different Twitter engagement metrics that can be measured to see what type of impression you’re making on your followers.
Tweet replies
Is a metric that gives you indications if a tweet was engaging enough to start a conversation around the subject. It’s also a great way of tracking your audience’s general sentiment and feedback.
Tweet mentions
Is a metric to measure brand awareness and conversations surrounding your company. It’s an indication that someone reached out to you and had something to mention about your brand, which makes it more valuable than a reply.
Tweet retweets
Is a metric that gives you indications about how shareable your content and how many times your tweet was forwarded. This gives you the opportunity to reach more people who may think your content is valuable.
The new network of Twitter users who are exposed to your tweet have the potential to become a part of your primary network if they come back and follow your brand.
Tweet likes
Is a metric that shows that someone reacted and liked the idea you expressed in your tweet. The motivation behind clicking like might be subjective to many, but it’s usually positive in sentiment and it helps surface the best ideas.
Tweet engagement rate
Is a metric that can be used to benchmark a tweet against a competitor with a lot more followers. It gives an average engagement score a tweet have collected based on audience size and tweet activity.
By using engagement rate as your metrics, you can make sure each tweet have equal amount of attention, even if one competitor got one million followers and another, only five hundred.
Twitter content types
A Twitter tweet is always restricted to 140 characters, but there are different content types, such as a Twitter card with either a photo or a video that can have impact on your engagement metrics.
When a link to a blog post or a website article is shared on Twitter, the tweet is automatically transformed into a Twitter summary card, containing a title and a description taken from the website that was shared.
Tweet brand mentions
Is the “buzz” around your brand and by monitoring mentions, you gain insights into where you’re doing well, where you can improve and who your customer base is. Being in the loop gives you the opportunity to grow your brand’s reputation and by responding appropriately to mentions, you let people know you’re listening; it’s the ultimate sign of good customer service.
Twitter influential followers
Is one of your most important Twitter metric values, it gives you credential as a brand and a great potential to reach new and bigger network of Twitter users who will be exposed to your content. By measuring influential followers and learn what they like, can give you invaluable insight on how to improve your marketing strategy and reach even more people.
A great number of influencers is a good indicator of popularity and overall success. If people want to work with you and represent your product or service, there’s a good chance you’re doing something right.
Facebook is by far the largest social media network and to be represented on Facebook is more or less a must. The network is slightly different from Twitter and you can create a company page or a business account to manage all activities around your brand.
Each company page can include information around your business that makes it more personalized and company updates can take on many different shapes, such as advertisement, announcement, events, notes, offers, photos, videos and a lot more.
Facebook fans growth
Fans are the number of people who liked your company page on Facebook and who’s automatically also is subscribing to your post or company updates. Your fans growth metrics gives you indications of how many people that you directly reach with your posts on Facebook.
Facebook post activity
Activity metrics are valuable to measure when your followers are most receptive for your Facebook posts. Set up a fixed posting schedule and track how often you post and on what time of the day in the week you receive most engagement metrics for your content, and improve your strategy until it fits your Facebook audience.
Facebook people talking
Is a metrics provided by Facebook that gives the number of how many people who have created a story from your post or Facebook activity. There are several scenarios when the people talking metrics are triggered and it could be when someone:
- Likes your page
- Sharing, liking or commenting on your post
- Answering a question
- Responding to an event
- Mentions your page
- Tags your page in a photo
- Checks into or recommends your page
- Claiming an offer
The people talking metric is a good indication of your reach and how many people that was exposed to your brand through actions they have taken. The more people that was exposed to your brand, the more likely you will find new followers.
Facebook engaged fans
This metric gives you an overview of your most engaged fans and how many times these people have taken actions on any of your Facebook activities. It gives you an indication of your brand ambassadors and how engaged these followers have been during a selected time period.
Influential followers are valuable for your brand and by finding ways to collaborate these people, you could get a boost in new potential customers.
Facebook engagement
Engagement measures the number of times someone acted on your posts. That could mean clicking a link, sharing your post, making a reaction or leaving a comment. Facebook engagement will boost your potential reach and each time someone has reacted over your Facebook content, that action will be visible on that person’s timeline.
There are several different Facebook engagement metrics that can be measured to see what impression you’re making on your followers.
Facebook likes
Is a metric that is counted in how many times someone liked what you have expressed in your post. Facebook likes are often considered a vanity metric and is therefore not counted as valuable as other engagement actions like a comment or a share of content.
Facebook comments
Is a metrics that shows you how many times someone expressed something about your content and started a conversation around the subject. A comment is a great way to track your audience’s general feedback and expressions around your content.
Facebook shares
Is a metrics that gives you a number on how many times someone shared your post. Shareable content increases your opportunities to reach a larger network of people and it expands your brand’s exposure.
Facebook reactions
Is a metric to measure reactions and sentiment around your post activity and it consist of six sentiment values from a Like, a Love, a Haha, a Wow, a Sad and an Angry reaction.
Each sentiment score can be measured for the emoji reaction it’s meant to convey and it gives you indications if your post is clearly positive, clearly negative, neutral or mixed.
Facebook engagement rate
To benchmark your post metrics against a competitor with a lot more fans, an engagement rate is used, this metric gives you an accurate score based on audience size and post activity. It also makes sure each post get equal amount of attention, even if one competitor got one million fans and another, only five hundred fans.
Engagement rates can be calculated for each post activity and reported based on audience size or the amount of posts available during the same time period.
Facebook content types
There are several different Facebook post types that can be created in Facebook and each post type can give you different values of engagement. Choose post types based on business objectives and below are those that are most common:
- Facebook link
- Facebook status
- Facebook photo
- Facebook video
- Facebook event
- Facebook offer
- Facebook note
A post with a photo or video will normally be more noticeable, but it might not necessarily generate more engagement. It’s advisable to test and measure what works best for your brand and your audience.
Instagram is a popular network within design, fashion, restaurant, travel and hospitality industry, mainly because the focus is on photos and glamorous content. Instagram is one of the fastest growing social media networks at the moment, due to a closer connection with Facebook and the integration between them two.
Instagram is not suitable for all businesses and it can be hard to find an audience if your business is built around services or products that requires a lot of written content to find attraction. However, it’s worth a try and we’ll help you to understand what metrics to measure to build a sustainable audience on Instagram.
Instagram follower growth
Is a metric that measures how many followers you have on your Instagram account. It will give you the raw audience number of people who are directly exposed to your Instagram activity. On Instagram, it’s easier to amplify your message if you have brand ambassadors with a large network of followers.
If you’re looking to grow your brand awareness then this is the Instagram metrics you should be measuring and spend attention to grow over time.
Instagram post activity
Is a metric that can be used to measure and understand when your Instagram followers are receptive for your brand activity. Set up a posting schedule and experiment with posting activity based on time of the day and day of the week to understand when you get most engagement out of your posts.
Instagram engaged fans
This metric shows you who your most engaged followers are, how many they are and who of them that is engaging as most with your Instagram activity. If you are looking for brand ambassadors that can amplify your message, then make sure to follow this metric value closely.
Influential followers are valuable for your brand and by finding ways to collaborate these people, you could get a boost in new potential customers.
Instagram engagement
On Instagram, the engagement metrics will help you to boost your reach and a post with an active stream of engagement will get prioritized and be shown more often in a user’s post feed. Instagram can be a great social media channel to enhance your brand awareness.
Instagram is also a known social media channel to find brand ambassadors and get those people to build and improve a brand’s reputation. There are less engagement metrics on Instagram than other networks, but it’s worth a try to see if it can improve your marketing efforts.
Instagram likes
The likes metric is the most common engagement metrics on Instagram and it helps you to boost your post visibility. Popular Instagram posts that uses a location or hashtag get promoted as prioritized content at the top of that particular subject.
Likes is considered a vanity metric and it might not help you to directly to increase your conversions, but it’s a great metric to grow your brand awareness.
Instagram comments
Is a metrics that gives you a number of how many times someone comment something about your content and started a conversation around your Instagram post. Comments is a great way to understand the sentiment value of an Instagram expression.
Instagram engagement rate
Is a metric that gives you indications on how many actions people have taken on your Instagram activity based on audience size and post activity. Engagement rate is a metric that should be used when you need to benchmark yourself against a competitor, as it gives you an accurate picture of the audiences and how receptive they are to the brand.
Instagram post types
Instagram is focused on visual content, so each post need either a photo or a video. It’s possible to upload multiple photos and create a gallery, but it’s still only one photo that will be visible in the content feed of an Instagram user. Videos can be an alternative to fetch the attention of the user, but experiment on what works best for you or your brand.
Social media marketing and competitive insights
By adding a few competitors to the mix, marketing managers will get a more accurate picture if they’re on track with their strategy. Measure your own business value is great, but benchmarking yourself against your closest competitors in social media analytics, is even better.
It sounds complicated, but don’t worry. There are tools online that can help you measure all social media metrics described in this article automatically and deliver them weekly or monthly so that you can focus on improving your marketing strategy.
Outsmart is an affordable internet service that is focused on social media analytics and competitive benchmarking, it supports Facebook analytics, Twitter analytics, Instagram analytics and several more marketing analytics metrics needed for marketers to save time and improve their daily work.
Start improving your social media marketing strategy today.
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