Social Media and Blog Metrics: Helping You Meet Your Business Goals

The most common goal for social media or blogging for business leaders is increased sales. That makes perfect sense for any marketing program.

To get there, marketers need to pay attention to a number of factors. These need their own strategies and regular evaluation of their performance. When that performance is not where it should be, adjustments need to be made and the new performance needs to be measured again.  

It’s an ongoing process of implementation, measurement, tweaking and implementation and one that ultimately drives sales success. But it does take time and the results don’t come overnight.

Traditional Media

Before the rise of online marketing, placing an ad in print or on TV or radio would be like turning the faucet of a hose: The calls would pour into the office just like water from that hose. It was expensive, though, and once you stopped spending, the calls went away.

Other than counting the number of calls, there was no way to accurately measure the effectiveness of your ad, either. Traditional media could not clearly answer the questions of how many people did the ad reach, what was their demographic, what actions did they take after the ad and how many took the action that you wanted them to take?

The answers to these questions are vital to understand how an ad is performing and whether or not it is effective.

Social Media Measurement

Social media and blogging, on the other hand, can clearly answer these questions. 

Let’s start with reach. It is the most important metric because it drives all the others. Social Media Examiner describes reach as, “…the number of unique people who saw your content.” Obviously, the more people you reach, the better. On Facebook, when a user interacts with a post, its reach goes up. Thus, you want to create posts that people will want to interact with to get more reach.

It’s important to note here that business page posts on Facebook only reach about 1% of their total fans. Relying on your posts to organically reach fans is no longer an effective strategy. So the best way to get your posts in front of people is to boost them, that is pay to have them reach more people. Facebook has become a pay-to-play platform.

Boosting a post is not the same as advertising on traditional media. While you are paying, the cost is significantly less. It can be as low as $5.00 per day. Your posts can also be targeted to the demographics you want to reach.

Advertising is also available on Facebook and is an efficient way to message people who are not your fans. They are targeted and, like boosted posts, very affordable.

Boosted posts and advertising on Facebook both provide the data necessary to make determinations on their effectiveness. If a particular boosted post or ad did not perform the way you hoped, then try different content next time until you hit on messages that work.

Blog Measurement

In other posts I’ve discussed the importance of blogging. Along with establishing your reputation as an industry expert and widening your search availability, blogs also help your search rankings.

Because the internet allows for in-depth tracking, you can also gauge each article’s effectiveness. By using Google analytics, you can see what types of content attract visitors. The tool also lets you see what those visitors did after landing on your website: Did they stick around and look at other information, or did they bounce away?

Using this data can guide you to develop blog topics that will attract future visitors. 

The Wrap

Establish your overall marketing goals. Then break them down into sub goals such as social media reach or blog visits. After a month, look at the data to see what is working and what is not. If a particular strategy is not getting the results you want, then adjust it and re-launch. Look at the results again next month.

Following this process will not only help you improve your social media or blog success, but once you find what works well for your brand, it will also help lead to sales.

The internet allows tracking like never before. Take advantage of it. 

If you have questions about digital marketing, call me at 513-237-5530.

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Bob Turner is a Digital Marketing Consultant in Cincinnati, Ohio.