Social media marketing can feel like a never-ending uphill battle, with new features and challenges coming up all the time. Often times people aren’t even sure that it’s helping their business at all. This feeling of uncertainty paired with the time and effort that it takes to build an online presence often causes people to lack commitment or give up completely. Sound familiar?
In our previous blog, we discussed the importance of social media marketing and how to choose the right platforms for your business so that you save time and resources while efficiently reaching more of your target audience. Now we are going to dive deeper to guide you through measuring and analysing you metrics so that you can focus your energy towards what is working and understand the parts of your social media marketing that are effective.
Before we dive deeper however, it is necessary to identify the goals for your business, identify your target customers, know which channel they use, and be prepared to allocate resource time to posting. (Our previous blog guides you through these steps.)
Once you’ve created your social accounts and have begun posting, it’s time to determine what types of posts are working – i.e. helping you reach your goals – and which ones are not. To measure your success, here are the four things to look at: vanity metrics, website traffic, leads (sales enquiries) from your social media channels or website, and revenue from these leads.
Here’s the run down.
Vanity metrics indicate how well your content is resonating with your audience. These are your likes, comments, shares, saves, etc. The easiest way to track these metrics is through the insights on each social media platform. Insights can be tracked over the last 7 or 30 days and do not allow you to reach back further. This is why it is so important to capture the data periodically. Choose one day of the week where you take screenshots of your metrics and record your data.
Insights show you everything from the number of accounts you’ve reached, the amount of content interactions you’ve had, to the location, gender and age group of your followers. This is crucial as it determines whether your following is made up of your target audience.
Website metrics track the traffic to your website. These metrics determine where traffic is coming from, be it social, referral, direct, organic, etc., what pages of your website are being looked at, the gender, age and location of your audience, and much more.
One way to track these metrics is through Google Analytics (GA). We will explore this more in an upcoming article, but for now by adding a UA code to your website you can login in to GA and review your successes. We suggest doing this either weekly or monthly and then comparing month over month and year over year.
A few quick tips for getting start are to drill down to your “Landing Pages” to see exactly which products, services or blog posts are performing well, look at how much time people are spending on each page, which page they are exiting on and the bounce rate (the % of visits where a person leaves from the page they landed on). An excellent bounce rate is anywhere between 26-40%.
Leads/ Conversions are the sales enquiries that you receive. These include calls, emails, social media messages, etc. It is one thing to have people “like” your content and visit your website but to have them reach out and enquire about your products of services is another.
Revenue from these leads/ conversions should also be measured regularly. Tracking online and in person sales that have come through social media is, of course, crucial. If the purchase was made online, you can track it through GA or depending on your website platform, directly in the back-end. (With Shopify, for example, you can trace your orders through the Analytics section.) If the purchase was made in store or in person, we recommend asking new customers how they discovered your business. If you feel comfortable, ask them specific questions such as what posts they saw and what they liked. Feedback and reviews are so important!
Now that you know what to measure, here’s how to go about it.
Benchmarking is the only way to see if your marketing strategies are working. Start with your current results. Screenshot the data that highlights the 4 types of measurements listed above. Create a document, for example an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint, where you can add this data and these images categorized by type. For example, Facebook, Instagram, and Website Metrics. Write in notes and any other details you’d like to remember from the week/ month that you are recording.
Once you’ve documented your first time period, set goals that are realistic for you and your business. Goals can be anything from increasing in web traffic (e.g. 50% over 6 months), to gaining new followers (e.g. 20 per week), to new leads (E.g. 5 per month). Make sure that your goals align with your overall business goals. If you are looking to grow your brand presence, focus on vanity metrics and website metrics. If you are looking to generate more income, hammer down on leads and conversions. (You really should be doing both!)
Remember the SMART rule: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely.
This is how you will achieve your goals. Choose a day of the week and time that you will record your metrics. For example, every Monday morning. Then choose a specific time when you will analyse and strategize based on your numbers. Notice a pattern in types of posts that are succeeding? Make a note and increase this post type next month. Notice more clients reaching out with specific questions? Make it more accessible on your pages.
Social media marketing is all about trial and error. When you find something that works stick with it. When something isn’t doing well, don’t become attached. Adapt, learn, and keep trying. We believe in you and your business and we are here to help.
Need a little help in setting up your Google Analytics? Looking for a template to facilitate the collection of your data? We’ve got you covered. Contact us today at https://watershedmarketing.com/contact-us/
