Putting your time and effort into social media for your business can be a lot of fun, but you need to make sure that it is having a positive impact on your business. There is no point in spending lots of time creating and posting content if it is not helping your business. But how do you know if your social media efforts are successful? Implement these strategies to help you understand, and monitor, the success of your campaigns.
Know Your Goals
What is it that you want to achieve with social media? Maybe it is click-throughs to your website. Perhaps it is shares, likes or comments on a post. Or, do you have a certain number of people you want to see your post each day, or like your page? Whatever it is having a specific goal, and understanding why that goal is important, will help you to measure the success of what you are doing. If you are not getting enough traffic, likes or shares, etc., you can look at tweaking what you are doing to make improvements.
Search Your Brand
When people are talking about your business online, there is proof of it. The use of hashtags and usernames in conversations is a great way to tell which people are talking about you and why. Twitter has a feature for searching usernames, and Facebook and Instagram allow you to search for content with specific hashtags. If no one is talking about your brand, you will know that you need to do more.
Facebook Insights
For those business owners on Facebook the free Insights tool is great to discover lots of information about your fans; where they are from, ages and gender, their likes and how many of them see and interact with your posts. Spend a little time each week exploring these insights and see which areas you need to focus on. Perhaps it is getting more people to see you content. Maybe it is encouraging people to Like or Share your posts, or to join a conversation. There is a feature on the Insights page that shows the engagement levels of your fans – you want to continually increase this to gain maximum exposure for your company.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics on your website is a great (FREE) tool for discovering where your traffic is coming from. It can show you the exact location from where people saw an ad or link to your website, and clicked on it. For example, if you placed links to your site on your Facebook page the analytics will tell you that on a certain day ‘x’ amount of traffic came from Facebook. If you did a specific post that day, you will know that people clicked on it, and it got their attention. Use this information to mimic what you did, or change your actions, to drive more traffic through to your site.
Have a Clear Path
Being able to measure the success of your social media efforts is dependent on one thing; your end goal. What is it exactly that you want to achieve from social media? Once you know this, you will be able to accurately measure its success. If you are not sure how to go about this, talk to YellowFin Digital, a digital marketing agency in South Texas. We can assist you with your social media measurement and campaign management. Contact us today and see how your business can get to the next level.