How do you know your social media marketing is a success?

You’ve crafted the post words, perfected the image or video and posted it – now what?

It goes VIRAL <stadium applause> … unlikely (sorry) and if it does hopefully it’s for all the right reasons, so … how do you know your social media is effective?

Social Media Metrics Basics

Who saw it? 

Measuring reach is how you know who saw your content. This can be organic (free) or paid through advertising. Reach is the number of individual people who saw your post. Related to reach is impressions – impressions are the number of times your post was displayed to people. One person may see your post a number of times, often impressions are much higher than reach and also a person doesn’t have to engage with your post to be counted.

Did they engage? Did the audience react (like, love etc), comment and share your post? They may have stopped scrolling to look at it (an impression) but did you get enough interest for a reaction or a comment. Audience engagement is clear, measurable recognition of your post and sharing your content is the ultimate endorsement for your content (assuming its a positive share of course).

Did they click? Not every post should be trying to make everyone click but if lead generation or sales was a goal for your post then check statistics on your call to action – did you get the clickthroughs to your landing page or website?

Did they convert? Brand product awareness is a large part of social media strategy but ultimately the purpose of business on social media is to grow leads and sales. A major goal for social media marketing is to drive traffic from social media to your website and/or blog. Check your website data and see how many visitors came from social media sites. And did those hits convert to leads and customers?

Successful social media marketing takes time and evaluation of your wins and duds. Over time are you noticing an increase in social media traffic? Are your followers going up? Are more people reacting, commenting and sharing your content? If not, are you posting content that is relevant to your audience? Also are your own employees engaging with your content and sharing it – authentic employee engagement and endorsement on social media is an excellent way to grow your social media presence.

Its important to remember that when evaluating social media metrics a big number isn’t always what you are looking for – what you want is quality engagement that converts. Measure your success in your own context, a smaller audience that actually buys your product is much more valuable than a big audience that doesn’t.

Contact us today to see how we can help you grow your social media success.