Are you wondering to how to measure your Social Media? Years ago, when you opened a shop and started to trade you would start by telling your friends and family about it, promote it to passing foot trade and then put out flyers and posters. These posters would also have the option of going onto buses or community centres too.
Today those flyers and posters are now social media posts. As much as we feel its an intrusion (and a lot of people do), there's a significant reliance on social media platforms these days to reach out and connect with others.
In this blog post I wanted to share the different ways of measuring your effectiveness by using analytics and benchmarking. These two very simple methods are rarely adopted by business owners in full and can give you a much rounded story of what's working and what's not. However:
What is in it for Your Audience?
To be at your most effective, you need to create content not for you - but your audience. It matters more what content they see and consume than what you fancy putting out that day. It doesn't have to be absolutely every post of course, just most of them!
What will benefit them by reading your post, watching your video or Live? Will they get something for free, will they learn something that solves a problem?
Where possible, answer this as often as you can with your posts.
What is in it for You?
Naturally, there has to be something in it for you too. This is where a call to action (CTA) is vital. You can ask people to subscribe to your email list, download your ebook perhaps, etc?
Ask people to share their opinions, post their thoughts or dreams. Tell them you have a solution that matches their wants or needs.The ultimate aim is that both of you walk away from this interaction with something beneficial!
Analysis and Benchmarking
The 6 Steps to watch and benchmark are below. Depending on how active your social media is, you can do this weekly or monthly. Now all you need to do is:
Please remember we all have bad weeks or even months. Consistency is key and of course having a Strategy!
Check your Insights
Every social media platform somewhere has an "Insights" section that you can explore, or you may want to use a 3rd party app like AgoraPulse (please check out my affiliate link http://bit.ly/AgoraTryOrBuy). You can then get the benefit of an easy, downloadable Powerpoint presentation that explains the analytics in English!
Check Google Analytics
This free add-on to your website though complicated to the untrained eye (I won't lie), is such a valuable tool. By tracking your most popular posts, your customers journey through the website and where they arrive and drop off you can massively improve the user experience overall. You can create goals and you can even see how long people stay on your website. If you've an e-commerce website, you can see what people put into their basket and sometimes see their wishlist too.
It took me a long time to get into Google Analytics but now I won't manage someones Social Media without it. It really shows how well your campaigns are doing.
Email Subscribers
I know it may sound old fashioned but this really is, still by far the easiest way to convert a customer. They already know you well enough (or want to), to subscribe and hopefully appreciate the content you share until they're ready to convert.
By asking questions and not just preaching to them - you can re-engage a two way conversation and get the relationship you already have with them on a more balanced footing.
Everything you send them needs to be beneficial so think who you could collaborate with and send them links, discounts and offers that make them want to return to you.
Engagement on Social Media
There is of course all of your social media engagement that you can measure. Engagement is more specifically what your audience is responding to and sharing your content to others. However, evoking a Like, emoji is OK too. Clicking the "see more" button or opening your images and videos and watching them for a certain period of time also constitutes as engagement.
Emails / phone calls
A million years ago I worked in a Call Centre for my sins and I genuinely wish I had continued the processes I had there until today. Every call we received we logged, normally what it was about and how long and of course who from.
IF you wish to use this metric in your measurements this wouldn't be a bad thing. Especially if you stay on top of it! You can see quite quickly any uptick and each "first" call would be the metric to measure. Might be worth finding out how they heard about you whilst you're at it?
Sales
It does seems remarkably obvious but its surprising how few people actually measure their sales. Like many SME's you probably have a few revenue streams. Mine would be from public and private clients for instance. I also get paid for writing too, so it's all for my business.
Although we all most likely have an accounts package, the only time anyone ever really looks at it is when they sort out their accounts once a year. That's a real shame, because you should be measuring what you made this time last year and perhaps keeping a monthly or more recordable, quarterly metric on a white board somewhere. I find this keeps me more accountable. Seeing the lines going up and down shows you the heart beat of the business.
Conclusion
I hope these techniques are useful to you. None of them are massively time consuming and in many ways, you may already be doing them and simply not recording them. By understanding when the best times to sell out your services and products throughout the year and by tracking the best images and calls to actions that work, there's no excuse for building your business. Why not start today?
If you would like any guidance or support with this, then contact Melanie at www.stomp.ie or find her on her social media platforms:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieboylan/ Twitter @STOMPSMTraining Instagram @melanie_boylan or Facebook @stompsocialmediatraining.
Working with clients Nationwide from base in Mullingar.
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