Like many business owners, you’ve probably spent a lot of time creating your social media marketing strategy, then spent just as much time implementing it.
If you have the resources, you may have even hired a social media specialist to run your various profiles. But is your strategy really working? There are some business owners out there who would talk about how many followers they get or how many likes they have, but those numbers don’t necessarily equate to an increase in sales. Here are some measurements you can use to determine if your social media marketing strategy is really working.
Followers and Likes do Count
The number of followers and similar terms do count for something, however. This is your reach, or the number of people each of your posts theoretically is seen by (this is theoretical because some sites such as Facebook don’t always show every post to every follower). What your reach tells you is how visible you are on social media and how many people find value in your posts. If your reach decreases, it indicates people aren’t finding your posts worth reading.
For business pages, Facebook now tells you how many people saw your post in their news feed. This includes those who saw your post on both the Facebook app and the website. Note, however, that this number only includes the 28-day period following the creation of the post. You will see this number under the post, but above the comments section.
In addition to this information, Facebook also provides Insights for each page. Here, you’ll see your overall page information (Reach, Likes, Actions) plus more detailed information about the last five posts made. This can help fine-tune your posts, especially if you see that one has done a lot better than others.
Follower Interaction
But having people follow you doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re paying any attention to what you post. That’s why you need to measure your social media marketing in more than followers. You also need to look at how many people are interacting with your page. How many likes do you get on your posts or images? Do people comment on what you post or retweet your Tweets on Twitter? If people are interacting with your posts, you’re doing more than just throwing things out there and hoping something sticks—you’re creating a dialog with your customers. When people take the time to comment or even click like, it shows that they’ve understood your message and have something to say about it.
You can see a great example of follower interaction on the official Facebook profile (www.facebook.com/facebook). Almost every post made on this page has comments on it, and many of those comments have replies that lead to discussions between commenters. When your followers interact with each other, it creates a good amount of buzz about your post and your business overall.
Conversion – Turning visitors into action takers
This is the most important question to ask: how many people purchased something or took some other action after seeing one of your posts? This includes registering for webinars, downloading a file, making a purchase, or visiting your website. Getting conversions should be the ultimate goal of your social media marketing. Gaining more followers and getting people to comment is great, but the bottom line is that you want to improve your sales.
If you don’t track your conversion rate using something like Google Analytics or a similar tool, you’ll have no idea how many new customers you’re getting from social media. If you don’t know this, you can’t really tell if your strategy is really working or not.
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By Jaime Nacach – I love helping small businesses with their digital marketing and business strategy. I’m a young man with a passion in entrepreneurship and international experience in business development, marketing, sales, and web/graphic design. I own Bloominari, a leading bilingual digital marketing company located in San Diego. The firm’s passion for design, technology, working with people, and exploring the complex realm of doing business in today’s world is what drives the team to constantly seek innovative ways to help companies embrace change, grow and succeed. Bloominari is a small business marketing and strategy firm by choice – the agency loves to work on challenging projects and develop lasting partnerships with customers in all types of industries. For more information, visit http://www.bloominari.com or call (619) 354-1118.
The original post can be found at www.bloominari.com/blog.