There’s a saying in business: If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
This philosophy shouldn’t apply only to profit earnings and customer retention. Measuring your communication efforts, specifically social media, needs to be a priority if your organization values growth over stagnation.
Contrary to common belief, measuring only vanity metrics such as likes, comments, and followers isn’t sophisticated enough for a holistic social media strategy. That would be like a business just counting how many people walk through the door in a day: helpful to know, but it doesn’t give an accurate picture of how you’re truly performing.
Part of the problem for many, including seasoned professionals, is the classic case of they “don’t know what they don’t know.” Understanding your reason for wanting to focus on a metric and obtaining an awareness of all the different kinds of actions you can gauge will separate you from the mediocre communication professional.
For example, consider using these narrowed metrics:
Negative Actions (Facebook): The number of hide, hide all, report as spam, or unlike Page actions taken towards your Pages.
Post Traffic (Twitter): The number of clicks on all links and vanity URLs included in the tweets published during the selected date range.
Post Engagement Rate (Instagram): The total number of likes and comments received by your posts divided by the number of people who viewed your posts, represented as a percentage value.
Page Reactions (LinkedIn): The number of reactions on your Pages' posts in the selected time frame.
Overall Responses Table (All Platforms): The list of all replies sent by the teams you manage, with details about the response time for each one.
If this has piqued your interest, you’ll want to watch PRSA Greater Connecticut Chapter’s “Social Media Analytics: Measuring for Success” webinar from March 24. The event featured Dr. Mary Dunn, an assistant professor at Quinnipiac University, who teaches courses on advertising and integrated communication, social media, and media planning.
PRSA CT describes the session by saying:
“Social media platforms track many analytics, but how do you make sense of them when determining if your strategies have been effective and efficient? To address this challenge, an understanding of how to interpret social media analytics is necessary along with a campaign review approach that considers how your social strategies fit with omni-channel campaign planning.
PRSA CT is pleased to offer this virtual Zoom event that will guide participants through the power of analytics in campaign development, management, and optimization. Join for a discussion of more advanced analytic methods such as social monitoring, social listening, and attribution modeling in the context of branded content for public relations and advertising.”
Check out the on-demand webinar to learn how you can improve your social media savvy and become more keen on social media analytics.