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Success with Social

What the hell are we here for?

Social media is a place to make money – if you’re reading this, you already know that. Brands that can identify their audience on social media and convert will succeed. Brands that cannot will suffer. Easier said than done; social media is a noisy and confusing place. How do you make sense of it all? Ultimately success in social media is defined by growth, context, and conversion.

Our reporting process has evolved over the years (and will continue to do so). The following recommendations are the result of many long hours of researching data, listening to clients needs, and testing. We value clarity over all else. The never ebbing tide of social media timelines are challenging enough – we don’t believe reporting should add to the feed. Social media reporting should provide confidence in the campaign’s direction and echo the brand’s mission.

Social media reporting is critical to determine your return on investment.

Closing Deals

If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense.

Social media reporting is full of pretty graphs and data points but at the end of the day we all want to demonstrate growth in revenue. In the campaign’s inception, it is critical to define a shared measure of success. How long is the sales cycle? What is the average sale? Where are sales converted? When possible we ask to track sales data directly from clients’ sites. For various reasons sales due to social media platforms are not always black and white. Clients need to qualify leads to gain a full understanding of the social media campaign’s success. Sales associates for brands should be comfortable asking, “Do you like us on Facebook? Do you follow us on Twitter? Are you subscribed to our Newsletter?” Answers to these questions are key indicators to the online habits of our clients’ customers.

Growth Insights

Does size matter?

Facebook and Twitter are the most critical social platforms on-line today. Weather you start with zero or 10,000 friends, you are going to want to see growth (in numbers) on these platforms. Talklaunch uses Raven Tools as a strategic partner in our report’s presentation.

Facebook

Facebook provides rich insights into growth and performance for Facebook Pages. Here are some key metrics you want to keep a close eye on.

Weekly Total Reach

The number of unique people who have seen your post or content, whether organically or via paid advertising. This metric provides a clearer view of your true footprint on Facebook users. The value of this number, however, is up for debate. Such a number won’t accurately reflect the value of your content since it’s too easily manipulated with ads. And it’s the “quality” rather than “quantity” of your Reach that ultimately matters, leading to meaningful engagement.

Who You Reached

The age and sex of Weekly Total Reach

Additional Facebook data reported includes

People Talking About This

People Talking About This is the number of unique users who have created a “story” about a page in a seven-day period.

Who is Talking About Your Page

The age and sex of People Talking About Your Page

Daily New Likes/ Unlikes

Tracking significant spikes or dips in likes is critical in determining the popularity of posts on the page.

People Who Like Your Page

The age and sex of People Who Like Your Page.

Twitter

Twitter does not provide native data insights. We rely on third party apps to quantify KPIs (Key Performance Indicator). We track the number of posts, the number and reach of retweets and replies, and the ratio of change between these metrics month over last month.

Daily Breakdown

Tracking significant spikes or dips in retweets and replies is critical in determining the popularity and ultimate selection of content in posts.

Social Monitor

Monitoring mentions of the brand, founder’s names, and/or keywords across all major social networks and website is critical to reputation management. You need to know what people are saying about your brand. Speed is key. Swift response provides the opportunity to share breaking news and comment on potentially negative posts.

Social Monitor searches are customizable by keyword, source, title, name, sentiment and more.

Contextual Analysis

Cache Rules Everything Around Me

Growth Insights are key in visualizing your market share in social space. Contextual Analysis seeks to fill in the scaffolding of this data. Who are the people your brand is communicating with? What is the measure of their influence? What is the quality of your brand’s engagement? Are you reaching the right people? Context is key in determining the success of your campaign.

Listening

With monitoring tools you can effectively listen in on people’s conversations. This can appear kind of creepy or bot-like if not done with great consideration. We create a list of keywords to listen for and engage in casual conversation. Over zealous sales pitches are bad form. Try humor or empathy – allow  the user to check out your profile and discover your services for themselves. Take care to properly qualify your target audience with your keyword selections.

Influencers

The thought leaders of your market are referred to as influencers. Gather a list of your market’s influencers feeds on facebook and twitter and engage them. Over time you build and document these relationships to become an influencer in your own right. Take screenshots regularly of influencer engagement to reflect on the campaigns context in the greater market conversation.

Direction

There are many ways to engage people on social media. Are you reposting your influencers updates? Liking or favoriting? Are you tagging them in relevant posts? Are you providing an additional resource for your influencers to pull from? Viewing the arch of your highlighted interactions in reports will deliver answers to the overall direction your campaign is heading.

Analysis

Interpreting your listening criteria, influencers engagement, and their context in the broader direction of the campaign gives you insight to the public’s common perception of the brand. Reporting on context is key to developing your brand’s unique authority and influence among competitors.

Conversion Metrics

To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly. – Benjamin Franklin

Click-through

Conversions are measurement of action. A sale can be a conversion. Gaining an email from an online form can be a conversion. In it’s simplest form, a click is the best indicator of social media success. When we post to social media we add links. When someone click’s that link – we count it as a conversion and report. Talklaunch uses Short Switch as a strategic partner in conversion reporting.

Value

Click-through is pure. Each social media platform has its own measurement of engagement. Twitter has replies or favorites, Facebook has share and likes, but the vast majority of engagement throughout social media goes unreported. People just read the updates. Click-through reporting gives us a tally of conversions when users click a link featured in a post but do not otherwise like or comment.

The majority of people’s online behavior is conducted under sense of perceived privacy. They’re less likely to like or a share a post as these actions are viewable by their friends and colleagues. Clicking links on the other hand, does not appear in their friend’s timelines. These clicks do however register on our reports. We measure these clicks in relation to engagement to further understand users private online behavior.

Click-through reporting is our best assessment as to the popularity of our posts.

Click-through tracking example

Conclusion

Infinite scroll

Social media reporting gives brands their best opportunity to change and evolve with new technologies and emerging markets. The pace of technology is swift and relentless. For business to grow you must have a firm understanding of where you’re at right now; what your strengths are – and where you can improve.  For every new data set there are new tools to help sharpen our understanding of social media engagement. There are new measures of growth and conversion. There are new paradigms to be explored. If you are looking for a greater depth, so are we. We would like to hear from you.

Raventools is a complete suite of online marketing tools