Social media is a great space where you can interact and engage with your audience and get to know them better. So if you are using social media to reach out to your target audience, you should use it to track your performance online as well, to learn what is successful and what needs improvement?
Tracking your brand’s performance on social media goes beyond tracking the number of likes and comments. The right way to get started is by tracking the right social media KPIs. You can measure ongoing activities over time or opt for measuring the success of a campaign or even an event that has a definite start and end date.
Steps to track your Performance on Social Media
Like we mentioned earlier, the proper way to get started is to track the right set of social media KPIs. To determine which metrics to track you’ll need to strategize.
State your Social Goals
There are many social media platforms and the number of active users on each of them is in the millions. Mindlessly tracking every Facebook post or every Twitter comment and trying to decipher the implication will only make you confused. Therefore, It is essential to define and know your goals first. What are you trying to achieve through these social media platforms? There are various platforms that cater to varying needs. If you want a platform that answers your questions, you’ll find that Quora is suitable for you. But, if you want to display vibrant photos of the merchandise available at your store Instagram is the place to go. Knowing what you need will help you choose the right platform suited to your needs like improving your brand’s performance on social media and also tells you which metrics you need to track.
Metrics to Measure
Once you know your goals, match them to see which metrics help you measure your performance. Here are a few suggestions:
If you wish to measure the increase in brand awareness and how far your message’s reaching, you should use track metrics like reach volume and exposure of your posts. Social analytics reports generally help you measure this data.
If you wish to figure out the psychographics of your target audience, gauging the social sentiment or tracking trends online can help. Social listening tools are a great help with this.
To find influencers and advocates, track contributors online. You could also make use of social listening tools to track people with influence scores. This will help you find a wider list of influential people – both hyper-influential and micro-influencers.
Monitoring and Reporting your Findings
You now know your goals and you are also tracking the required metrics. Use the initial findings to set a baseline for you to rate your performance in the future. Keep a regular check on these numbers. Use social analytics tools to run reports, compare the data with the baseline or measure them against what your competitors are achieving.
Social listening tools help you rate your performance as compared to your competitors. Just add your competitors’ profiles to the dashboard and you can run reports to get comparative data.
Once the entire process is set, you are ready to take your social media marketing to a whole new level. With these insights at your disposal, you can monitor the pain points of your brand and address them immediately, without delay. Your brand’s performance on social media will perhaps not show a drastic improvement in one day, but learning from the data, adjusting and improvising over time will definitely ensure that you reach your goals.