No doubt, social media marketing is a powerful tool that every business leverages to reach and engage with their target audience. We have covered a lot on that topic here.
The question now is how do you know if your social media marketing efforts are yielding results?
To effectively measure the success of your social media marketing efforts as a complete beginner, you need to focus on certain key metrics. These metrics will provide you with valuable data to assess your performance and make insightful decisions.
In this article, we’ll discuss the important key metrics you need to focus on as a beginner in social media marketing, and also explore how social media marketing can be measured.
Key Metrics to Focus in Social Media Marketing
As an expert or beginner in the world of social media marketing, it’s crucial to keep a close eye on the following important key metrics below.
Follower Growth
The number of followers is a basic metric you should naturally keep track of. A steady increase in your number of followers as a newbie indicates your content is resonating with your audience.
For example, if your Instagram followers increase from 500 to 1,000 over six months, it shows that your social media marketing efforts are paying off as your brand is gaining awareness.
Engagement Rate
This includes metrics like; the number of likes, comments, and shares, and it’s a testament to show how well your content connects with your followers.
If your business post on Facebook receives 100 likes, 30 comments, and 10 shares within hours of making the post, this indicates a high engagement rate, meaning that your posts resonate with your audience.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
This is another important metric to track. Let’s say you ran an Instagram ad campaign for your e-commerce store, and you get more traffic on your store than usual, it means that your ad converted i.e. people clicked on your link through the ad, driving more traffic to your website.
The rate at which people click on your link is known as the click-through rate. CTR is essential for tracking the website traffic generated by your social media efforts.
Conversion Rate
This key metric tracks the percentage of users who take the desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, after clicking on a social media link.
Let’s say, a sign-up form campaign you made on Facebook generated a lot of leads, you can know the percentage of people who signed up using this metric.
Reach and Impressions
Simply put; reach measures the number of unique users who saw your content, while impressions indicate the total number of times your content was displayed on the social media platform where you made that post.
Return on Investment (ROI)
ROI, this metric measures how profitable your social media marketing effort was. It compares the expense of your social media campaigns to the earnings you generated from them.
If your e-commerce business invests $1,000 in Facebook ads and generates $5,000 in sales directly from those ads, it means you made 400% ROI.
It’s important to note that this is a metric you may have to calculate on the side because it is not all social media platforms that would specify it for you.
Customer Feedback and Sentiment
It’s important to collect feedback in a spreadsheet and monitor comments and reviews to gauge customer sentiment. Whether positive or negative feedback, they can provide valuable insights into your marketing strategy.
Perhaps you’re running an ad campaign for a restaurant, that you can target to increase the positive reviews the business receives on TripAdvisor, or you can run an ad campaign highlighting previous customer testimonials you have.
Time Spent on Page
For website traffic driven by social media ads, tracking the time users spend on your site can reveal the quality of your content.
If the link to a blog post you shared on Facebook results in an average page visit duration of 5 minutes, it shows your content is very engaging.
Pro-tip: optimizing your CTR helps a lot in driving page views.
Why is it Important to Track Your Social Media Performance?
Tracking your social media performance serves as the guiding force for your social media marketing endeavours, it ensures the effectiveness of all your social media marketing efforts and their alignment with the overall goals.
Some other reasons include:
To assess your ROI
Tracking performance helps you determine if your investment in social media marketing is generating a positive return on investment.
Strategy Adjustment
By tracking your social media performance, you can realize what’s working and what’s not. This information allows you to readjust your strategies accordingly.
Content Optimization
Social Media Marketing performance metrics reveal which types of content resonate most with your audience, helping you optimize your content strategy.
Competitive Analysis
By tracking your performance, you can compare it to your competitors’ performance, which will provide valuable insights into industry benchmarks and trends, and help you remain in sync with the latest trends.
Resource Allocation
Effectively tracking your performance metrics, will help in allocating resources more efficiently. You can invest more in what’s working and reallocate or cut back on strategies that aren’t yielding results.
How Can Social Media Marketing Effectiveness Be Assessed?
As we’ve previously discussed the fundamental metrics for tracking your social media marketing, it’s time to explore the tactics and actions that can contribute to ensuring success.
These strategies will later facilitate a more straightforward assessment of your overall marketing initiatives.
Set Clear Goals
Your social media goals must be specific, measurable, and time-bound, like increasing your website traffic by 20% in three months or doubling the number of followers on your Facebook page in six months.
Select Key Metrics
Choose key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your goals.
For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, focus on metrics like reach and impressions. If it’s about lead generation, concentrate on conversion tracking and click-through rates.
Decide the Right Analytical Tools
Use analytics tools provided by each social media platform (e.g., Facebook Insights) and consider third-party tools like Google Analytics, Hootsuite, or Buffer for more in-depth analysis.
Regularly Analyze Progress
Regularly review and analyze the results from your social media metrics, tracking your progress towards your goals and adjusting your strategy as needed.
Compare Results
Compare your social media metrics to benchmarks in your industry to understand how you measure up against competitors.
Restrategize and Implement
Use the insights gained from your analysis to refine your social media strategy, focusing on what works best for your audience.
Wrapping Up
It can be frustrating to invest significant effort and resources into your work and not see the desired results.
That’s why regular result analysis and making incremental adjustments to your strategy are crucial. Instead of executing for an extended period and then assessing, it’s more effective to analyze and tweak continuously.
Another critical aspect to enhance your social media strategy’s outcomes is your content strategy. Here, we provide a step-by-step guide to creating top-quality content for your brand or your clients.
