A short anecdote to begin this blog: In an effort to improve my eating habits and make healthier food choices, I’ve lately been using the MyFitnessPal app to track my nutrition. After a series of Thanksgiving dinner first and second servings (and snacking in between), I happily reported to my sister, who’s aware of my health goals, that somehow, the scale didn’t go up when I weighed myself this morning. She said, “Well, you didn’t eat A LOT.” Which wasn’t quite true...I simply ate more of the better-for-you foods but not necessarily less food altogether. “It’s not really so much to do with the amount as the quality,” I told her.
The same, “Quality over quantity” rule seems to apply in many facets of our lives, including social media management. The trick is to strategize smartly; not necessarily to gain X amount of followers, but to sustain X amount of followers for the long-term. Like nutrition, it’s not all about the number of calories consumed, but what you are feeding your body to benefit your health. In the Module 4 Web Analytics 2.0 video lecture, we reviewed the key metrics that most (if not all) social media managers use to determine the success of a campaign. They were listed in the following three categories: Audience - 1. Page Visits 2. Unique Visitors 3. Page Views 4. Bounce Rate 5. New Visits Acquisition - 1. Traffic sources 2. Referrals 3. Keywords Behavior - 1. All Pages 2. Landing Pages 3. Exit Pages All of the above are solid metrics, and useful for any organization, business, or social media campaign to keep in mind. Additionally, they all fall into social media expert Avinash Kaushik’s Four Attributes of Great Metrics (uncomplex, relevant, timely, and instantly useful). It’s helpful to get a general idea of how successful social media efforts are via page likes, re-shares, number of followers, etc. But what I’d consider my “dream” metrics are ones that go a bit beyond the obvious, combining the best of qualitative and quantitative information. The following is a brief list of a few dream metrics of mine, including explanations for each: Number of Followers - Over the Course of a Few Months Even though I just stated that number of followers isn’t the most important metric, it is crucial to see the ebb and flow of follower count over a substantial period of time. Social media managers must identify at what points of each month and which posts resulted in a significant increase or loss of followers. This is ‘instantly useful’ information as page managers will easily be able to determine which posts or strategies to replicate and which to abandon. Amount of Time Spent on Page/Bounce Rate Site views and visits don’t matter all that much unless they result in answers to calls-to-action (i.e. sales, subscriptions, and so forth). By identifying how long and on what pages a viewer spent the most time on, social media managers can see what they’re doing well, and what they may be doing wrong. In his article “Web Metrics Demystified,” Kaushik states that bounce rate (the number of followers who leave a website after viewing just one page) is an effective metric because it helps business owners see where their time, money, and energy may be wasted. He argues, “You can just look at (bounce rate) and know what needs attention, what needs to stop … You look at a page with 50% bounce rate and you know it needs attention. You see a campaign/keyword with 70% bounce rate and you know there is a fire.” Landing/Exit Page Activity Similarly, it’s important to know what may be compelling a visitor to exit prematurely from a website. In addition to seeing how much time was spent on landing and exit pages, social media managers must identify what factors might’ve encouraged this action. Was it a poorly constructed ad? Spelling errors? Too much technical language? Landing and exit page activity is one of my ‘dream metrics’ because it opens doors for page managers to change up their strategies and create ones that cause visitors to stay for longer. Most Effective Keywords Kaushik also explains that simply knowing what a site’s keywords are isn’t enough; managers need to know which ones pack the most punch: “Anyone can tell you what your keywords were this month, or last month,” he writes. “The ClickTracks reports shows you ‘what you should care about,’ keywords that rose in their importance this month and which ones reduced in importance." Google Analytics or similar metrics tools can measure the effectiveness of certain keywords, letting social media managers know which keywords to build their marketing strategies around. Traffic Sources If Internet users are drawn to a website through a Facebook ad, a Google search, or a Tweet, social media managers best put their marketing strategies to use on the platforms where their target audience is spending the most time. It’s not enough to simply know where views are coming in from; knowing the traffic sources becomes a dream metric when page managers use this information to generate more activity in the places they know their audiences are.
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