Social media campaigns are best viewed as a living, breathing, and ever-changing creations. They require love and attention to guarantee you the best possible results. Analysing your campaigns not only helps improve your current ones but your future ones too, as you learn from the trends and results that can be implemented into your future campaigns.
When investing in social media campaigns it can be hard to know what ads are working – if an ad does not bring in revenue does that mean it was a failure? Social conversion value can be much more than just a click to buy and can create a familiarity with your brand that can lead to a longer relationship.
For your campaigns we have chosen these four metrics to focus on:
- Engagement
- Awareness
- Return on investment
- Customer communication
ENGAGEMENT
How engagement is measured varies by platform. For example, on Twitter you may be mostly interested in the number of retweets your post got, but on Facebook you might be more concerned with the number of comments your post received.
No matter what platform you are posting on, the engagement rates are a reflection on the health of your post. More engagement shows that your post is resonating with your audience and you have caught their attention.
Although each platform works off different algorithms, the general consensus is the more engagement a post receives, the more it will be shown.
The three main engagement types are;
Interactions: Each platform will show you the number of likes, comments etc each post has received. On Facebook you can see this in your analytics or your business manager.
Rate of engagement: This is calculated by dividing the number of engagements into the number of impressions (or reach.
Organic mentions: This is when your business is tagged, not in a reply or when asked by another user. This indicates excellent brand awareness.
Looking at a combination of engagement metrics is necessary in helping you pull the right levers for your campaign. For example, if your campaign did not get many comments, but did get plentiful likes, this could be a successful campaign if your post was image based and the intention was not to entice comment engagement. Knowing what metrics matter to each post is important to knowing what works for you.
AWARENESS
Awareness can be divided into two main areas, reach and impressions. These two metrics are particularly important if your campaign is based around brand perception and awareness.
Impressions: The number of times your post appears in people’s timelines.
Reach: The number of unique visitors your post can reach, this usually constitutes the number of followers you have plus the number of followers each person that shares it too.
It’s important that you look at these metrics alongside other metrics however. For example, if your aim with awareness is to shine light on a particular topic or issue, measuring engagement alongside impressions would be a good combination. A post with high reach and high engagement would signify that your post went viral in some sense.
ROI
Social referral and conversions are likely tied into your overall business goals and can be measured.
There are different ways of keeping track of this and will be particularly important for e-commerce websites. Within Google Analytics we can track what happens when a user comes from your social if you use UTM parameters in your links.
The use of UTM parameters (tracking links) allows you to track the source of your website traffic and hence, give credit to your social campaigns should they convert. These results will be viewable in your Google Analytics. Other e-commerce platforms such as Shopify will have these reports built into the platform.
Referrals: this explains how the user landed on your page, in reports this will usually fall under the source/medium category. From there you will be able to see exactly where the traffic came from.
Conversions: are counted towards your campaign when a user lands on your website and makes a purchase thereafter.
It is also worth considering your Click Through Rate (CTR) with your return on investment measurements. A strong CTR indicates your post was effective at grabbing your audience’s attention. You should remember that each industry has varying CTR success levels, it is a good idea to study this before calculating your overall ROI.
CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS
The final measurement to consider in your reporting is how you are engaging with customers directly. Measuring the response rate and the response times will tell you if your customers are being both listened and responded to in a respectable time-frame.
Measuring tools such as Sprout Social allow you to measure your social response rate and times, and also who was responsible in each case. Facebook for example will also display on your profile how long the visitor should expect to wait for a response.
In summary, the success of your campaigns now, and in the future is directly tied to your ability to measure and adapt each one as you are building and maintaining them over time.
There are an infinite number of measurements to consider, however, if you keep engagement, awareness, ROI and customer communications at the forefront of your mind on each campaign, you will have a solid understanding and ability to get the best possible results over time.
