If you’re like most business people today you’ve probably found yourself wondering and discussing this important question: Can social media be measured?
In a recent post by blogger Alistair Fairweather, he suggests that by keeping your eye on the following six metrics—Engagement Ratio, Influence, Referral Rate, Click Rate and Conversions, that you will have a good idea “whether your social media efforts are soaring or souring.”
- Reach: People who have shown they are willing to engage with you by joining the channel which you control e.g. twitter followers, facebook fans who “like your brand”.
- Engagement Ratio: Active contact with your messages and your brand which includes reading, replying or forwarding your posts, flagging or mentioning your brand, visiting your channel page, clicking on your links, or inviting friends to your channel.
- Influence: Measures how likely people are to actively pass on or promote any message you publish in a channel.
- Referral Rate: Aggregate measurement of how much traffic a social media channel is sending to your site in any period.
- Click Rate: Measure of how many times people click on the links you push into your social media channels.
- Conversions: Measure of how many of your social media referrals achieve your goal of signing up, ordering a product, or taking whatever next step you identify as part of your social media strategy.
Getting back to the question, Can Social Media be Measured—it’s easier to get to the answer, “Yes”, when you keep these six metrics in mind.
There are a plethora of tools available which can help you keep track of how well your efforts are paying off. We’ll look at some examples in a future post.
photo credit: neurmadic aesthetic’s photostream
