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Whether you like it or not, social media has now become a part of everyday life and that includes how you present your business to your customers. Whether you own a small handyman service or a computer repair shop, if you want to increase your market share, you'll need to have a presence on social media.
But how can you determine whether or not you are actually making an impact on social media? It can be daunting at first, especially if you don't consider yourself an expert when it comes to technology, but all you have to do is follow these guidelines and you'll easily be able to understand how your customers are interacting with you through social media.
Understanding Social Analytics
It makes sense to actually understand the meaning of social analytics before you attempt to measure it. To make it simple, social analytics are the measurements of the success of your social-media marketing. However, it doesn't necessarily mean you need to look at the number of your Facebook followers or the amount of retweets you get (though that is one part of it). Instead, you need to be looking at the following things in order to fully understand your social media analytics.
The Size Of Your Community
This one is pretty easy to understand, as all you have to do is look at the total number of followers or Facebook fans that you have. If you have multiple social media accounts, you will want to look at all of your fans across the entire social media spectrum, as the combined total can be an indication of whether or not you are effectively marketing yourself on social media. The more you increase the size of your community, the more effective your social-media marketing is going to be.
To keep track of all of the analytical data for your social media profiles, Klout is a resource that you should definitely consider advantage of. It can examine up to 12 social media profiles and will measure the influence of each profile based on the level of your followers' engagement. It can easily allow you to see which updates you make have the biggest impact on your customers and followers.
Bounce Rate
Here is where things get a little tricky. Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who either leave your site immediately after visiting it or bounce around from page to page on your site. A higher bounce rate means more people are actively exploring your site, which means they are engaged by your content and want to find out more! Google Analytics is one of the best analytical resources on the market, especially when it comes to determining bounce rates for small and medium-sized businesses.Have you enjoyed reading so far?
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Visit-to-Lead Conversion Rate
This determines exactly how many of your followers are actively visiting your social media profiles because of "leads" that you are having. This can be anything from having a special offer on a product or service that you offer or some type of other promotion.
Measuring this can allow you to see which leads are more successful than others, which can allow you to increase the effectiveness of your social-media marketing strategy. If you're having trouble determining this information, Google Analytics is a great tool for analyzing these types of conversion rates.
Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate
This is perhaps the more important conversion rate. It can be a little difficult to track, since it doesn’t technically take place on social media, but it can help you determine whether or not your social media presence is bringing in customers. This conversion rates refers to the number of people that actually become one of your customers because of one of the "leads" you posted on social media. Understanding this number can allow you to identify which leads are the most effective at bringing in more potential customers.
The Tone of Engagement
The age old saying "there is no such thing as bad publicity" doesn't really apply to social media. A good reputation that took you years to build can come crumbling down in a matter of days if you neglect your brand on social media. So you need to be able to determine whether or not your customers/fans are positively engaging with the content on your social media sites. It can help you determine if they are happy with what you offer and if they seem unhappy with something, you can attempt to communicate with them in order to fix it.
Who Exactly Are Your Followers?
Understanding your clientele base is important in any business and social media can easily do that for you. This aspect of social analytics is important because it not only allows you to determine who your customers/fans are, but other crucial marketing aspects, like where they are located or what time they are visiting your site.
It can also help you determine if the people visiting your sites are actually leads or other "competitors" in your industry - which means you need to change your social marketing strategy in order to bring in fresh customers.
Determining Where the Lead Came From
If you're running special promotions on referral or paid advertising websites, you'll definitely want to know whether or not they are effective at bringing in customers. This statistic can help you determine which leads bring in more traffic to your site and can allow you to figure out where you want to focus most of your social-media marketing efforts.
One of the best social media analytics resources that can track your leads is Bit.ly. It is a URL shortening and tracking tool, which can be incredibly useful if you use Twitter, and Facebook too I suppose. More importantly, it can help you determine which links are getting the most clicks. By taking advantage of this resource, you can figure out what type of content your customers/followers are more likely to be interested in.
How Do Your Customers View Your Brand?
Understanding your customers is incredibly important, which is why you'll want to know whether or not they started following you by word of mouth or if they "liked" your page after they took advantage of a special promotion. This can give you insight into how effective your marketing strategy is and whether or not some customers are satisfied with your products and promotions.
And if you really want to get a full understanding of how your customers/followers view your brand, SimplyMeasured offers free analytical reports that can show you how effective you are on each social media site. SimplyMeasured even offers reports that compare your social media statistics to your competition!
By utilizing the proper resources and tools, you can better understand your social media analytics. And by understanding your social media analytics, you can better understand your customers' motivations, as well as what makes them a loyal supporter of your brand!