With social media being a key aspect of digital marketing, it is crucial to analyze and evaluate how well your content performs in this avenue. A critical mistake that novice marketers often make is relying solely on daily likes, comments, and shares. Though this gives you basic snapshots of performance, it does not allow you to delve into a deeper analysis of what exactly is working for you. With this in mind, I’ve outlined 10 performance-based metrics that you need to add to your spreadsheets while analyzing your social media content strategy.
1. Content-based metrics
Let’s begin with analyzing your content itself before you get into its performance. When you use content metrics, you can see what types of content resonate with your audience, and what types do not. Create separate columns for various content pieces such as: links, videos, images, text-based posts and original posts. Track their performance over a period of time and watch of distinct patterns that can help you understand more about your audience’s preferences.
2. Audience-based metrics
Understanding your audience is vital while crafting content for social media. It can impact the way your content is perceived and interacted with tremendously. Also, if you spot a major difference in the audience you have on your Instagram page and Facebook page, then you know that you need to re-think your social media strategy as you may be attracting the wrong types of consumers unintentionally. While creating your spreadsheet, be sure to include columns for: Total followers, new followers, Male %, Female %, primary location, age group, Google Analytics Alignment as well as the accounts that you follow.
To analyze your social media audience, use tools like:
- Friends+Me
- Followerwonk
- Google Analytics Audience Report
- Tailwind
3. Time-based metrics
Knowing how often you post, as well as when you post, can help you understand whether you’re missing out on key peak hours of traffic. Though there are multiple websites that claim to know exactly when to post for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, your own data can provide you with the insights you need. Make columns for Posts per week, Posting time, Posting Day, Number of seasonal or timely posts, Most engaged audience time and most engaged audience day.
4. Social media listening metrics
Social media listening is imperative for brands as it helps you understand what consumers are saying about your brand. This way you can not only respond on time but also ensure that you gain a deeper understanding of the way people think of you. If you notice more negative mentions over positive ones, then perhaps it’s time to change something! Make sure you add these columns in your sheet: Total number of mentions, total positive sentiments, total negative sentiments, primary commenter, and neutral comments.
5. Engagement metrics
As I said earlier, people rely far too much on the likes, and unless your goal is to increase the number of likes you get, this metric does not mean a lot on its own. Engagement should be a part of your metrics, but not the only thing that you consider. Make sure your spreadsheet has these columns for tracking engagement: total engagement, engagement by type (likes, comments, retweets etc), increase in engagement rate, decrease in engagement rate, mentions received and DMs.
6. Competitor metrics
Understanding what your competitors are doing is also quite important. Make sure your spreadsheet includes parameters like strengths, weaknesses, % of engagement difference, and new opportunities.
7. Social traffic metrics
Your social media may be buzzing but if that does not drive any new consumers to the website, then what’s the point? You must examine your social traffic metrics too in order to see what you can do to increase your sales and business. The following parameters can help you gauge the same: total sessions, total page views, bounce rate, pages per session, mobile vs desktop traffic, most common links shared, and average session duration.
8. Social media management metrics
If you’ve hired someone to manage your social media, then it’s crucial to understand whether they are doing a good job. Track who manages your social media, how often do they update you, what growth have they contributed to, how have they handled PR issues, the average response time for engagement, the average response time for DMs, who reports the findings, and so on.
9. Branding metrics
These metrics can help you see how often the content you post aligns with your brand’s values. In order to ensure this, you must have branding guidelines for your team to follow. These guidelines should include terms to avoid, dos and don’t visual marketing guidelines, mission statement, company naming, and public relations policies.
10. Goal and summary metrics
Set clear, achievable goals regarding what you want to achieve with your social media, along with how you plan to achieve them. Your spreadsheet should include columns like: did you accomplish your primary goal? Did you accomplish your secondary goal? % difference from this quarter and last quarter. You should also have columns for conversion rate, overall social media reach, number of conversions completed, economic value gains and losses, and total posts. Once you reach your goals, you can set new ones.
With these metrics, your brand should be able to craft more insightful strategies with data that reflects your performance.