There’s a fine line between art and science when it comes to social media monitoring. There are dozens of services – both free and paid – that will tell you just about anything you want to know about the activities on your social media sites. They’ll count clicks, track shares, and show you how many people Like your brand this week versus last, and so on.
And, just like our audiences will ideally do, social media monitoring options increase as our brand gets bigger because now we need to know more than we did last year… Now we need to have more detailed stats to show that our efforts are actually worth it.
Or do we?
The problem with analytical tools is that we can become too dependent on them. Focusing on analytics tools themselves – and the need to constantly collect bigger, better data – doesn’t really do us any good. We are better served by defining and focusing on the things we want to analyze or measure.
Determining specifically what information or activities is most useful for our marketing purposes is top priority. Define which of your business goals will be met by which social media activities and then focus on the items that provide the most effective and measureable feedback. Just as it isn’t necessary to participate in every single social media platform, it’s not necessary to follow every metric outlined by every available analytical tool.
Vanity metrics like followers and Likes can fluctuate wildly on different platforms. Bot activity and “harvesters” – who follow and unfollow wildly with the goal of garnering return follows for their own site – will always impact your numbers negatively. They may (temporarily) increase the numbers, but they’re not active or valid followers.
• How are people interacting with your brand?
• What sources are driving more visitors to your website?
• Do visitors from some sources spend more time on your website than visitors from other sources?
• What are your online communities saying about your products and services?
• What do you need to do to help direct those conversations more effectively?
• Which activities link directly or indirectly to sales?
• What seasons are busier or slower, and how can you use social media to better balance the ebb and flow?
These are just some of the questions you need to be asking to help define what you want to analyze or measure. Being as specific as possible will be far more helpful than just randomly “measuring” everything.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be talking more about the process of improving our social strategies with analytics and how to determine which tools are the best for your brand or business. With a well-defined list of goals and priorities, you’ll be amazed at how much more effective your analytics will be!
Comments (1)