When you’re trying to determine the ROI of your social media efforts, you’ve got to know where to look. Simply having 100,000 followers on Twitter should mean you’re doing well there, shouldn’t it? Not necessarily.
Let’s look at the data you should be paying attention to in order to understand if what you’re doing on social media is working.
1. The Content and Updates People Share
When you post an update to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google +, et al, what happens? Does it sit there like a bump on a log, or do others share your update? Ideally, you want the latter.
The number of retweets and shares you get will be in direct proportion to the number of followers you have (more on that in a bit), so don’t get disheartened if you have 200 followers and no retweets. Social media growth happens slowly sometimes.
If you think you should have more shares than you do, take a look at your content. Is it self-promotional? Are you sharing the same tired blog post over and over? These may be symptoms that what you’re sharing isn’t interesting to your audience. Time to recalibrate.
2. Responses to Your Updates
Nobody likes talking to an empty room, and when all your social updates get ignored, it’s simply no fun (and a waste of time). Again, the more followers you have, the better the response rate you’ll see.
Vary what you post to social sites. Maybe some of your updates are content shares, some personal tidbits (“boy, could Friday come any slower??”), and some providing useful tips to your followers. See which get the best response. You may need to alter your proportions based on which see the most traction.
3. Your Number of Followers…With a Caveat
As I said at the start of this post: simply having a ton of followers doesn’t make you a social media rock star. If you actually look at who’s following you, you may see that many show no indication of being a part of your target demographic.
There are bots and even humans who are paid to follow as many people as possible to get more follows back. They don’t care what you’re posting. So if 30 percent of your followers are essentially spammy followers, valuing your social media worth on your number of followers will be overinflated.
The more targeted people you follow, the more targeted your following will become. Search keywords that identify your demographic and find people that way. Or search your brand name, product type or competitors and see who’s talking about them. Follow those people and join the conversation.
There are lots of social media metrics you can pay attention to with your social media efforts, but these three will give you an indication of how successful you’re being, as well as what you can change to be even more successful.
Photo: Clara T, ALA staff (Creative Commons)
