This document outlines five steps to effectively measure social media:
1. Develop a framework with social and business objectives, key performance indicators (KPIs), and secondary metrics.
2. Focus on metrics that matter like reach, engagements, actions, and audience insights.
3. Find the right tools to track metrics, support business needs, and aggregate data from multiple accounts.
4. Look beyond numbers to gain insights by asking questions about trends, outliers, and problems to solve.
5. Listen to audiences to understand sentiments, feedback, mentions, trends, and influencers.
How consumers use technology and the impacts on their lives
Mia Vallo - How to Prove the Value of Your Social Media Campaigns
1. Five Steps to Measure
Social Media Effectively
MIA VALLO
VP, Digital Analytics and Optimization, National Geographic Partners
Adjunct Instructor, Georgetown University
@miavallo | #DSDC
20. #3: Find the Right Tool(s)
Image by Blogtrepreneur, Flickr.com, howtostartablogonline.net
21. Which Social Media Tracking Tools to Use?
Support business needs
• Key metrics for your business
are available
• Aggregate info from multiple
accounts and platforms
• Competitive information
Usage
• Ease-of-use
• Tag or add labels for types,
topics, or campaigns
• Export raw data
• Connect to social media
publishing tool
Cost
• Licensing fee
• Consulting or custom
reporting fee
Security
• Data security (private metrics)
• Access restrictions for
different levels of users
24. To Gain Insights ...
Ask the right questions:
What is the business problem that I’m trying to solve?
What are the outliers (good and bad)? What makes them outliers?
What are the trends (overall and by audience segments)?
27. More Than Sentiments
General attitude by segment
Feedback on your company, products, and service
Mentions of competitors
Identify trends
Find influencers and super fans
Promotional opportunities
Feedback loop to your fans and customers
31. Key Takeaways
1. Develop a measurements framework
based on your business objectives
2. Focus on the metrics that matter for you
3. Find the right tool(s) to track the right
metrics
4. Look beyond the numbers and draw
insights
5. Listen to your audience beyond positive
vs. negative sentiments
There’s really no one-size-fits-all approach in social media.
You may find that if a specific platform performs differently for let’s say reach vs. engagements, then focus on the key metric for that platform. For example, perhaps you have a lot more followers on Instagram, but they’re not very engaged. In that case, yes, capitalize that high reach and find ways to improve your engagement rate. So perhaps your key metric for that platform is your engagement rate. And on Facebook, let’s say that you have a smaller community, but they’re super engaged with your content. So perhaps your key metrics are both engagements among your community, specifically shares, so that they can share what they love with their Facebook friends.
You may
As you’re going through the metrics and measuring performance, do get excited about the information available about your account and about your content. But don’t forget about your audience. In order to improve the performance of your social media campaign or account or specific posts, you’ll need to know your audience.
Not just knowing their demographics and interests, although they will help, but also about how they respond to your content.
Here’s an example of a Nat Geo post from when Finding Dory was released …
Here’s another example where our social media producers call out the 14-lb lobster that was caught and then released.