- You spend a lot of time creating and perfecting
your campaigns on social media.
But is it all worth it?
The best way to know is by consistently measuring
your efforts to understand which actions
lead to results.
This way, you're not relying on a guess
or a gut feeling.
To begin, you need to be aware of what goals and metrics
you'd like to track in order to effectively attribute
the impact of your social media activities.
As a quick reminder, a metric is a unit of measure
that lets you know your progress in reaching
a particular goal or not.
The metrics you'll monitor will vary
based on where you're active on social media
and the goals of each campaign.
Like, if you're goal is to generate leads on Facebook.
Then the metrics you'd look at
are the click-through rate on your ads,
the total number of leads you gained
and the cost per lead.
These goals and metrics you plan to measure
will inform what measurement tools you'll review
on a regular basis to understand your progress.
These tools analyze the performance
of your messaging by assessing your company's
social media accounts, reviewing public data
on these networks, and tracking tagged links you've shared.
Review the range of free and paid social media
measurement tools available to get a sense
of their capabilities and how they align
with your company's needs.
There are third-party analytics tools,
like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and Matomo,
to help companies measure progress across social media
and other marketing channels holistically.
These tools are best used to understand
social media's impact on the bigger picture.
Then, there's tools that only measure social media,
like quintly and Keyhole, providing detailed insights
into your progress on these channels,
as well as the analytics features
of social media management tools
like Sprout Social and Agorapulse.
Social media monitoring tools,
like BuzzSumo and Mention, are another type to consider,
as they can help track brand mentions
and offer insights on the performance of your content.
Last but not least are the native analytics tools
that are provided for free as a part
of your business account on most social networks,
like Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
They are not as robust as paid tools
in terms of the data and insight they provide,
but they still help you understand the impact
of your messaging.
I recommend investing in more than one
social media analytics tool, so you're not relying
on any single source of data regarding your progress,
as no analysis from any tool is 100% accurate.
With that in mind, the best way to figure out
which of these tools is right for you
is to review and test their features
to understand if they provide reporting
on your goals and metrics.
And of course, the budget you're working with
will also impact which mix of tools you decide on.
To spend your time more wisely on social media,
it is essential that you're aware of which activities
have positively impacted your campaigns.