Tools such as Social Mention or Sprout Social let you track the number of brand mentions on social media. You can see when Facebook or Twitter users mention your company (with or without the @ sign) in a tweet, Facebook comment, or Facebook status. This tells you not only how frequently people talk about your brand in social media conversations, but also the context of discussions where they mention your brand. You can determine if users are delighted by your brand, frustrated by a specific feature, or simply wanted to let their friends know that they use your products. Keeping track of social mention helps you gather intelligence quickly and identify areas for improvements.

Platforms such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are essentially free promotion channels for brands. They enable companies to promote their latest articles, YouTube videos, infographic, or other content to a qualified audience. To assess the performance of such social media programs, you need to track social media traffic. Monitor traffic from Facebook or Twitter to determine whether there are increases or decreases to indicate audience engagement or content appeal. If there’s a decline in social traffic, you may need to assess whether the content is well-tailored to the audience or if the headlines are attractive enough. Moreover, you may also want to determine whether your social traffic is coming from suitable geographic locations. For instance, if you’re a local retailer, you want the majority of your social traffic to come from the Lower Mainland. If you identify that most of your traffic is from other parts of the world, you have to develop content that’s more specific to the Lower Mainland or create programs to engage with local shoppers. You can track social media traffic with Google Analytics; go to All Traffic under the Acquisition section and you’ll see a breakdown of traffic sources. 

In addition to broadcasting web content, social platforms are commonly used to promote products or services. Brands such as Lululemon use YouTube and Facebook to showcase their latest yoga clothing and the lifestyles they bring to their customers. To examine the effectiveness of their social media efforts on sales, marketers should use attribution models. Attribution models identify how different channels and touchpoints have converted or assisted with sales. If you discover that social media isn’t contributing to assist or convert, you can spend less time building a social media community and more time on developing email, AdWords campaigns, or other digital channels that your attribution model shows are more effective.

 

Above are just three simple tips that you can use to measure social media engagement. These approaches show how popular your brand is online, how interested your audience is in consuming your content, and how social media contributes to final sales. To learn more about social media marketing, register for our 1-day Digital Marketing Workshop Training or contact us for specific digital marketing services.