To have a successful social media strategy, tracking analytics is a must to determine what’s working, what’s not and how to effectively pivot for success. These tools give brands an inside look at who they’re reaching and how those individuals are engaging with their content. Analytics also gives the ability to identify how their products and services make users feel and their reactions to them.
First, to understand why they matter is to understand the process. This important process collects data from users across all of your social media platforms and returns this evaluation back to you. Platforms like Sprout Social and other social media analytics and management platforms give you an easy understanding through reporting modules. Google Analytics tracking also gives you a lens into user traffic, source and content reach and depth. Understanding what resonated most with your audience lets you hone in on these results as you further incorporate them into your social media strategy. It also leads to deeper personalization as you are able to create better digital relationships with your customers, clients and the people who want to hear from you.
Now that you understand the importance, process and a few tools to help get you started,we compiled these top metrics you’ll want to make sure to track and begin your journey to optimizing your social media landscape for success.
Post Reach aka Visibility
Visibility (see: Four Methods to Maximize Visibility with Google Ads) is a cornerstone to branding. The more opportunities for someone to see and connect with your brand will ultimately support keeping your brand top-of-mind in your said industry. Overall post reach determines how much of your audience has seen your post and if this number is high, that means your timing is where it should be. If you’re not getting the exposure you’re looking for, try first adjusting the time you’re distributing content and see if it improves. Also see how visibility across a group of social media posts to determine if context could be challenging your reach.
Engagement Rate
Engagement is critical. If your social media posts aren’t getting engagement, not only does it impact how the platforms place your content within the algorithm (aka visibility!), even your own community will start to see less of your content. So! Make sure you are polling and really getting to the bottom of what matters to those you want to hear from you. How are you filling in the blank for those who are asking, “What’s in it for me?”
This metric also gives insight into the effectiveness and quality of your content as it measures likes, comments, shares, and clicks. Was your audience responsive to the content your team spent a fair amount of time creating? Engagement rate will uncover that. To increase this, practice consistency when it comes to posting as you also up the frequency.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR matters especially when you’re running paid campaigns. What’s the outcome of how many people saw your content (visibility) compared to how many landed on our end destination (action!). This metric gives insight into how enticing your offer is and if people feel the need to know more about it. If this rate is not where you want it to be, having a more compelling offer is the solution to this. Here at Lotus Digital, we’re always striving to keep our clients above the platform benchmark for CTR. Another pro tip is optimizing content for CTR and looking at backend Google Analytics to see how the second layer of engagement on your website – what did they do once they got to the end destination? Complete the CTA? Bounce? Went to another page?
Bounce Rate
This refers to the number of users who clicked on your link but exited before taking any further action. This can signify changes that need to be made to get your audience to take the action you want them to. Thought-out landing pages can assist you in reducing this percentage to an ideal number. Another way to think about bounce rate is to ask, “did I offer my digital traffic another opportunity to stay within my website?” If the answer is no, you can expect a high bounce rate. Also, you can expect a climbing bounce rate if you’re running paid campaigns on content that matters to a narrow audience. Generally, you want to stay below 60% and in the cases of bringing pretty specific traffic to a blog say, it’s not uncommon to see 80-90%.
Conversion Rate
Conversions are the icing on the cake. If you’re reading this, chances are conversions signal a fairly important sign of intent from your audience. In a nutshell, this measurement is the percentage of your followers that took the desired action compared to the total visibility that the content has received. Analyzing this metric lets you dive a little deeper into what brings value to your audience. If you’re not satisfied with the outcome of this metric, incorporate a stronger, clearer action to get your audience successfully through your marketing funnel.
Ultimately, you always want to track content and campaign metrics for success. Here at Lotus Digital, we call it “Report, Refine, Repeat,” and it helps. Not only does it help our clients see the outcomes of campaigns, but it helps improve results. Time and effort are the main components for any successful business strategy (see: Four Steps for a Successful Account-Based Marketing Campaign). Maximize ROI and minimize loss. Easy to say, but the follow-through can be challenging without the right tools and strategy. Building digital authority takes time and effort, but it also takes knowledge of who your audience is, where they frequent and what matters to them. By tracking your social media content and campaigns with these metrics, you’ll set off in the right direction.
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