I often remind my clients, when it comes to your online presence and the content you post, the only real estate you own in the digital space is your website. Not your Twitter feed, not your Instagram followers and definitelly not your Facebook page. In other words, you don’t own your online stuff and your fans and followers. Sure, it strokes our ego and it’s gratifying to have thousands of friends on your social platforms, but unless they’re engaged with your content (i.e. liking, commenting and sharing) AND you’ve captured their email address, you’re just spinning your wheels and probably doing a lot of work for very little return.
Social media is only a means to an end. In addition to building brand awareness, the ultimate goal of engaging on social platforms is to direct people to your website or your sales landing page, capture their contact information and build a tangible list of loyal subscribers and clients.
There are as many social media “experts” out there as there are so-called metrics and it’s enough to make a business owner’s head spin with the glut of information and bright shiny objects flying around.
Here are three solid ways to measure the success of your social media without relying on the misleading vanity metrics of fans, friends and followers:
The Three Most Important Things You Should Measure on Social Media
1. Measure Your Website Traffic from your Social Platforms
Do you know how many “friends and followers” are actually coming to your website as a result of what you share on your social media platforms? You can use resource like Google Analytics (if you haven’t set it up for your website, this is the first thing you should do) will tell you exactly how much traffic you’re getting and where it’s coming from. If you need help, you can schedule a FREE Consultation!
Getting real legitimate traffic (i.e. people that aren’t bouncing off after a quick homepage page view) to your website means that people are getting to know you and consuming your content. Analytics will tell you which pages are the most visited, how long people are staying on your site and if you’re getting any repeated visitors. The number one reason why you want more traffic to your website is to get people to sign up.
2. Measure Your Subscribers
You may have heard that your email list is like gold in the digital marketing world. The reason you want to capture an email address is so you can create a direct relationship with someone through their inbox. The ability to establish that intimacy with people in your community is priceless.
While it’s highly unlikely that Facebook will shut down any time in the near future or that Instagram will be hacked and you’ll lose all of your followers, the only thing you own and can protect is your website – and the list of email addresses you collect over time.
So create something for your audience that will be extremely helpful to them – an e-book, guide, podcast interview, manifesto, free videos – and give it away in exchange for their email address. Then continue to add value through your ongoing email communication. This is what turns interested people into raving fans and into buyers.
3. Measure Your Potential Customers Engagement
This is often considered “likeability,” and somewhat of a soft metric, but it’s the key to your growth and your ability to convert social followers to subscribers and raving fans into loyal clients.
Engagement isn’t just about the number of “likes” you receive on Facebook or the followers you have on Instagram, it’s about your level of customer service, the value of the content you share and your ability to show how much you care for your community. Engagement means the lights are on wherever you have a digital presence, and that you are responsive, interactive and helpful.
It’s much better to have a highly engaged community with 500 followers, than a misleading popularity metric of 10,000, or even 100,000 followers, with very little engagement. Ultimately, the most important metric on social media is the real relationships you build, nurture and grow.
For more Business tips just select the Becoming Entrepreneur category on our blog 😀
With Love,
Hanni B.
