Choosing which social media metrics to track can be a make or break decision in your social media marketing strategy. Without a strong grasp of what different metrics mean and how they support your business, it’s impossible to get an accurate read on your campaigns.
Problems with setting goals and tying them to right metrics are some of the most common social media strategy mistakes. Thankfully, finding and tracking the right social media metrics is simpler than you think. By setting campaign goals first, then picking metrics to measure those goals, you’ll be able to have a more focused, more effective social presence for your business.
Tie Social Metrics to Marketing Goals
One of the biggest mistakes that brands and businesses make on social media is confusing metrics for end-goals. Someone decides they want 500 new fans and a 25% increase in likes, then uses this as a starting point for strategy. Unfortunately, more fans and more likes don’t necessarily mean a more profitable business.
It’s important to make sure your end goals are stated in terms of their value to your business. Don’t think about how you’ll grow your Facebook page — think about how you’ll grow your bottom line. Then ask yourself what types of activities on Facebook can be drivers for the kind of growth you need.
Are you trying to generate awareness?
Build brand loyalty?
Generate leads?
Make conversions?
Once you know the answer, focus on metrics directly tied to your core goal. If you’re trying to build awareness, metrics that measure engagement will be more valuable. But if you’re trying to generate leads or sales, it’s better to focus on campaign attribution metrics.
Sales Funnels and Social Media Metrics
What if your business is creating a more layered social media strategy, one that reflects multiple stages of your sales funnel? If so, you won’t be able to tie your campaign to restricted set of metrics. Instead, you’ll need to build a segmented measurement model.
When your social media strategy covers more than one step in your sales funnel, you’ll need to break down your measurement model to cover each individual step in your funnel. This way, you can measure the success of your campaign at each individual step, the same way you would for traditional sales analytics. This will allow you to zero in on areas which specific parts of your campaign are driving growth, and which need further work.
In multi-level campaigns, you may be drawing metrics from multiple platforms, which make it difficult to get a full overview of your campaign. If you’re planning a complex campaign, make sure you have a dashboard or reporting system in place that will allow you and your social media marketing team to follow the metrics that matter all in one place.
