Measuring the Success of Social Channels – The Basics

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To measure your  progress is a crucial component of any marketing campaign and the same applies on the social web.

There are many free and paid-for websites and programmes you can use to monitor your social activity. (Such as Social Mention and Monitter) with so many available it is easy to get lost and confused about what you should be monitoring in your campaign, and difficult to know where to stop. As with every marketing channel it is imperative to remember that you can’t have results in every variable all at once!

Your social objectives and analysis of your fans social profile should indicate what statistics you should pay attention to. One truly essential tool to have is Google Analytics. Once you have set this up, Google allows you to identify your key referral sites – aim to get your social channels in the top ten. The bounce rates, time spent on site and conversions should also be recorded. Aim for the lowest bounce rate (the rate at which people leave your website), with time spent aim for an increase per month as this is usually an indication that your content is relevant to the social channel post – aka the right people are passing through to your page. Conversions should increase with effective social channel management, these show how many friends/fans become customers.

For basic channel management, it is advised that you monitor:

Facebook (available via Insights)

• New Likes
• Post Views
• Post Feedback
• Monthly Active Users
• User Demographics

Twitter 

• No Following
• No Followers
• Mentions
• Retweets

Analytics

• Traffic sources
• Bounce Rate
• Pages Viewed
• Time Spent on site
• Conversion to targets

As your social channels continue to grow and expand you may find that other aspects of your channels continue to grow, by recording the above data a brand should be able to identify key areas of their social web that are not expanding, and for methods of expanding these areas, get in contact for free advice or follow for exclusive future updates.

The Importance of Interaction In Social Media

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Golden Rule 1 – Listen, then engage!

It really is crucial to build engaging content for our audience, and this content has to be interesting and relevant to give the results that we want.

Social media isn’t about making a quick sale (with the exceptiong of social commerce), as those of you already optomising the social web will know, use POP/POS for that. Social media is a tool that we can use to get direct and personal access to our consumers and target audience. The conversations make on social networks will not provide a hard and fast sale but exectuted correctly may lead to to sales down the line. Most importantly we have access to advocates that can increase sales free of charge!

Upon speaking to a recent graduate, she passed on a link to her own personal blog for me to check over for her and one feature struck me . She had created some rules for social media and the one that I found most shocking was “Social media must be Fun”. I understand what she was trying to say, what she meant was that pages should be engaging and interactive.

Serious brands with sensitive subjects would be silly to provide a fun environment for users. They should, however, relevant FBML tabs, ask questions, provide polls and real time responses. If FBML is out of your budget ensure that you listen to your audience and reply. Don’t be afraid to humanise your brand, the response from a brand is exciting and special to every fan or follower!

Facebook is a brilliant platform for conversations to build and expand. The key message to remember is ‘Converse with the audience don’t talk AT them” Social media is about building rapport with users so that down the line likes turn into friends and friends turn into sales and a successful sale turns into free promotion on the social web!