SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS A Beginner s Guide To Measuring & Analyzing Social Media Effort Natchi Lazarus
Social Media Metrics A Beginner s Guide Contents 1. What is Social Media Metrics 2. Why is Metrics important for Social Media 3 4 3. Seven Foundational Steps 4. Starting Point A Base Document 5. Tools for Social Media Metrics 6. What to Measure and How to Measure it 7. Conclusion 5 7 8 11 14
WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS? Social Media Metrics is the art of measuring, tracking and analysing your social media efforts in social networks (like Facebook & Twitter). Metrics or the Quantitative Measure of the social media effort provides a number- driven approach for business management and they help managers & business owners make the right decision using statistics and numbers instead of just relying on their gut feel or intuition. Decisions alter the course of your business in the long- term. You could make decisions to change your mission, approach, effort, time, budget and resource allocated for any business activity in your organisation based on these metrics. So, it is crucial that you understand the Social Media Measurement Process well.
WHY IS METRICS IMPORTANT FOR SOCIAL MEDIA? Generally, it is a good business practice to measure all the effort, but measuring is specially important for a resource- intensive activity like social media marketing because of two reasons: 1. Decision Making: There are simply too many social networks already in the market and there are more of them coming up every day. So there are key decisions to be made: Which social media network should you be using for your business? On which social media network should your precious marketing time and money be spent? How much time should you spend everyday on social media? Which social network works for your business and which does not? What is the ROI (Return on Investment) on social media marketing? Social Media Metrics will help you answer these questions and help you navigate your way through all the noise and chaos. 2. Time Spent: Today, businesses and marketers spend a lot of time on social media, trying to make sense of the millions of conversations and interactions that are happening around the world. Some statistics for you: Recent research report from Business Insider says that Social Media is the No:1 Activity for Internet users (even more than email!) Facebook had 1.3 Billion active users as on January 2015. According to Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2014, a signi]icant 92% of marketers indicated that Social Media Marketing is important for their business. So, not being able to measure Social Media effectiveness is not an option anymore. That is why Social Media Metrics has become one of the most sought- after topics in the industry today. This ebook is designed to give you enough information to start taking meaningful steps towards measuring your social media efforts. This is not a comprehensive document on the subject. We hope that you will be able use this as a good starting point for your social media measurement journey.
STRONG FOUNDATION - THE SEVEN STEPS There are 7 foundational steps to become a Social Media Measurement expert. 1. Set Aside Time: Be prepared to spend a few minutes/hours on a regular basis towards tracking your progress. Just like you check your email everyday, you need to track your social media progress on a regular basis. With mobile apps and tools to help, this is not a as dif]icult as it sounds. 2. Start Learning: There are many tools and ways to measure social media efforts; and most of the tools are not simple enough to use them straight out- of- the- box. There is a learning process for each of them. You must be willing to research and learn about the tools & its features. 3. Decide To Invest: The right metrics at the right time can give you business revelations that could change your business forever and bring you huge pro]its. So, be ready to invest not just time, but money, resources and effort into this task. 4. Choose The Right Tools: In the next section, we are going to talk about the different tools that you can use for social media metrics. After a bit of trial and error, you should be able to choose the right tools that work for you and use them regularly.
5. Write Down The Objectives: Take time to write down what you want as the outcome from your social media marketing efforts like brand building, sales, better recruitment, pro]itability, reach, etc. (quantify each one of them). You may not be 100% on- target right now, but having a goal is good. It s a starting point. Later in this ebook we talk about a base document that will help you do it. 6. Align Your Objectives: After you know your social media objectives, write down how they align with your overall marketing objective and business objective. This will act as a benchmark/reference point for your measurement journey. 7. Be Patient: Social media results take time. It s a long- term investment. Be patient. Be willing to take time to sow the right seeds, labour a bit, wait a bit & then reap a good harvest.
STARTING POINT A BASE DOCUMENT You cannot know how far you have come, if you do not know where you started. Knowing the starting point is important. Creating a Base Document will show you where you are at the moment and will help you plan for where you want to go. You could follow these simple steps to create it: 1. Create the document on your computer, preferably a spread sheet (Excel, Numbers for Mac or even Google Docs) 2. Start by adding your business goals or objective for the time period at the top (I use a new sheet for every week and a new document for each month) 3. Create four columns Channel Name, Metris, Current Status & Future Goal. 4. List down the goals that you have in mind for each social network & the metric that you are measuring. For eg: Number of Likes, Number of Comments, Number of Posts, etc. for Facebook and Number of Followers, Number of Retweets, etc. for Twitter 5. Visit each channel and record its actual performance at this point in time from its analytics section (Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, etc) Congratulations! You have created your ]irst Social Media Metrics base document. You will use this as a benchmark to measure your progress on an ongoing basis (weekly or monthly). No matter which automated advanced tool you might use for Social media Measurement at a later point in time, you will always know where you started by using the data in this document. Here is an example of a base document. In the following chapter we will discuss some of the tools that will help you measure with ease.
Sl No Social Media Channel Measuring Parameter Current Status Future Goal 1 Facebook Page LIKES XXX XXX 2 Facebook <specific post> 3 Facebook <specific post> Comments XXX XXX Shares XXX XXX 4 TwiCer Followers XXX XXX 5
SOCIAL MEDIA METRIC TOOLS: Having the right tools can help you save time. Let us look at some of the tools available today for social media measurement. There are plenty more out there. Here is a very useful list of articles from Social Media Examiner on the subject of Social Media Measurement Tools. Google Analytics Before listing out some of the free and advanced tools, we have to talk about the grand- daddy of them all, Google Analytics. First of all it s free! And the latest version of Google Analytics has great features for tracking Social Media Metrics. Their mobile apps are very useful and helps you keep track of the numbers on- the- go. You can even create your own metric dashboard and see speci]ic metrics that you want to see, based on your business goals. The details of using each of these features is a good topic for a separate ebook (which we will come up with in future). Use your Google account to sign up and start exploring this awesome tool. URL: www.google.com/analytics Free, Freemium & Premium Tools: There are some Free tools other than Google Analytics. And there are the Freemium tools where the basic package is free, but you need to start paying when you use advanced features. Some of the Premium tools have Free Trials that you can use to check them out before subscribing.
Hootsuite Primarily a social media dashboard, it also has useful tools for measuring and analysing your social media efforts. It has advanced automated analytic reports that you can buy. Apart from allowing you to see the feeds of Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn in the same window, it also has useful sales- related social media services like Geotracking, which gives you a list of social media conversations (public) that are happening in and around a speci]ic distance (say 20km radius) from your business location. They do have a mobile app. URL: www.hootsuite.com Social Mention Social Mention is an aggregate tool similar to Google Alerts, but for social media. I use it all the time to get email alerts on our clients and their brands. They give you insights into who is saying what and the sentiment behind it. URL: www.socialmention.com SproutSocial Similar to Hootsuite this is a social media dashboard for your social media networks. They also offer great social media measurement tools. They have one of the best looking interfaces for analytics (among the free category) and it is very user friendly. But they are a bit more expensive than Hootsuite. They do have a 30- day free trial that you can use to check them out. URL: www.sproutsocial.com
Kissmetrics A successful company in the metric space that offers targeted analysis for ecommerce. The metrics program tracks social media and also offers an A/B testing option to see which version of landing pages brings you the actual business. If you have an app, it will track how people are downloading it and using it. URL: www.kissmetrics.com Facebook Insights Facebook is constantly improving its internal measurement service for Business Pages and has added many functionalities to this Free in- build tool. You should de]initely check this out before opting for any paid service. URL: Facebook Insights Simply Measured: This one is for the really serious business owner. They have some of the most advanced tools for social media measurements like Cross Channel Analysis, Competition Analysis, Content Performance, Hashtag Monitoring, etc. They do have a Free- trials. URL: www.simplymeasured.com Some of the other prominent tools for you to consider are Twitter Analytics Moz Analytics Sales Force Marketing Cloud Sumall and How Sociable
WHAT TO MEASURE AND HOW TO MEASURE? There are 7 key parameters that need to be measured. 1. Measure Reach When you plan for & discuss social media reach, you need to understand two types of reach - potential reach and the actual reach. Actual reach may be small, but potential reach may be higher. For example: Assume that your business page has 100 followers. Assume that each of your followers have 1000 other people in their network (friends & family). Scenario 1: All 100 of them decide to share your content. Then potential reach of your content is 100100 (which is 100+(100X1000))
Scenario 2: Only 10 people in your follower list decide to share the content, and then your potential reach is 10100 (which is 100 + (10X1000)) So potential reach = People in your network + People in the shared network So, for a business, the social media goal should not be just to gain a follower, but to propel them to action. 2. Measure Transaction You need to measure the amount of transaction/sales/conversion (or whatever your business metric is) from all your social media channels. Eg: How much of your sales for this month originated from Facebook page or Twitter account. This can be measured by using one of the tools given above: First, you need to integrate your social media channels tightly with your website. Then, using some of the tools like Google analytics or Kissmetrics, you can track the number of transactions/sales that was generated through a particular social media channel. 3. Measure Referrals/Recommendations Track the following for 30 days (which is a good time frame for analysis) Monitor mentions of your brand name (including misspelt ones & variations of your brand. You can clean them up later using tools.) Track direct recommendations i.e. someone telling another person on a social network to buy your products/services. Track implied recommendations i.e. someone saying good things about your brand on the networks without asking anyone to buy. List down the names/pro]iles of people who were the recipients of these direct or implied recommendations
Cross check with your CRM or prospect/contact database to see how many of them are in your pipeline right now. Once you measure this, establish an internal social media team (or just allot some of your personal time) to get in touch with these people directly and check with them if you could do anything to help them buy. Make provisions for a coupon or freebie for such customers and take that extra effort to make them buy. 4. Measure Social media Leads Social media leads can come in different forms other than direct enquiry: Leads come from contact forms in landing pages for social media Direct sources like blog subscription Leads from of]line event where you publish your social links Leads from downloaded contents after email signups Leads generated by overlaying follower list with pipeline list Measuring and tracking these quali]ied leads can make the life of your sales team much easier. The good thing about social media leads is that these customers are already aware of your brand and some of them have already interacted with your brand to some extent. 5. Measure Direct- Response Sale When you integrate your online sales into your social networks, it becomes an easy and effective way to track your return- on- investment (ROI). You can do direct- tracking of social media ROI using: A promotional code or coupon that you distribute only inside your online community A speci]ic and unique landing page that you create for your Twitter or Facebook followers A sharable coupon for your Facebook or Google+ members. Use apps that help you integrate your ecommerce platform with your Facebook page
6. Measure Social Bookmarks When you create relevant and useful industry content, social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg & Stumbleupon start bookmarking your links. Tracking this will help you see the resonance that you produce with the market and with your consumers. You will see who is bookmarking you and when they do so. Correlate this metric with the traf]ic on your site and the reach of your social media. 7. Measure Cost Savings Always track the cost incurred before and after social media initiatives. Many businesses are surprised at how much they have saved in customer acquisition, marketing, advertising and sales costs when they focussed on a few social media steps like generating relevant & original content. Keep cost savings as an important metric during your regular team review sessions. CONCLUSION Social Media Measurement is a time- consuming task that requires discipline and investment of time and effort. But once done, the results are amazing. It can help you not only be successful in business, but also be stress- free knowing that your business is heading in the right direction. It will also help you save cost and operate more ef]iciently. What we have outlined are just a few tips and tricks, but each topic needs a much deeper study than this. We hope that this has given you a good start to your social media measurement journey. We wish you good luck. Happy Digital Marketing!
For more resources on Digital Marketing & Social Media for Startups, Small Businesses and Non- Pro]its Visit our Website www.openmindsagency.com Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Thank you! Natchi Lazarus Open Minds Agency