You’ve invested in social media for your ecommerce business. But how do you know whether that investment is getting results? Are you clear about which social media platforms are working for you? Do you know which platforms to drop or adjust strategies on based on low ROI?
The only way to get the right answers to these questions is to monitor metrics that measure how well your social media marketing efforts are doing.
11 Social Media Monitoring Metrics to Implement Today
The metrics you choose vary depending on your goal. The following, however, are good starters, as they are important to the success of most social media platforms.
- Volume: This can be an indication of interest when tracked over time. How many people visit your social media pages? Is volume increasing or decreasing? If traffic is decreasing, you might wish to consider making changes to the design and content of your social media pages. Also look to identify use patterns. When is volume highest? Consider introducing promotions and sales during high-volume periods for improved engagement. Even if you only post at high-volume times, you will have a broader reach (see below).
- Reach: This measures the extent to which social media conversations are spreading. Shares, retweets, and comments that are also shared or retweeted are all part of reach calculations. Note how this is different from simply counting visitors; your audience size is often much bigger than you realize.
- Engagement: How many people are talking about your brand? Are they increasing your reach with retweets and shares? Do they like your content? Can you see any patterns in what they like or spread through shares and retweets? Who is commenting, and what kind of content generates the most comments?
- Industry share: How well does the performance of your profiles compare to that of your competitors? Depending on your industry, you may be able to determine your share of the conversation about the industry.
- Followers: Although having an engaged following is thought to be better than just counting the number of followers, there is a benefit in knowing the sheer number of followers. If you are hoping to increase your reach, knowing how many followers you have is important. This is especially true if you are trying to identify the channels that work best for you.
- Mentions: Tracking the number of times someone mentions your brand is a way of monitoring engagement. It is also a way to compare yourself with your competitors. It helps after a product launch to see whether people are talking about it and whether they like the new product or service. You can also determine the best times for your audience to post or share based on when people are talking about you online.
- Sentiment: Positive and negative mentions both require attention. In fact, it is arguable that it is more important to attend to negative comments and mentions. If you don’t respond to negative mentions, you could easily measure sentiment by a decline in engagement, followers and sales, despite your hard work.
- Influence: Who is talking about your brand can be even more important than the number of people talking about it. What you want is to have followers and friends who are in a position to influence others to act, resulting in more engagement, more followers and, ultimately, more sales.
- Drivers: Which social media channels are driving the most traffic to your website? And how long do visitors spend on your site after landing? You might wish to focus your efforts on the platforms that drive the most traffic and refer the most engaged visitors.
- Conversion: Which social media channels generate the most conversions? Driving a lot of traffic or having many followers—even engaged followers—is good for building brand awareness. However, it is even better if the traffic and followers convert into customers who purchase your product or service.
Get Help With Social Media Metrics
Many tools exist to help monitor and analyze social media performance. Setting them up and managing them can be time-consuming, however.
If your time is valuable to you, work with a social media consultant who does the setup, monitoring and reporting on the metrics most useful for your business and social media presence. Reach out to our knowledgeable consultants today.
