Last week, I sat in on a meeting where one of my co-workers shared the results of a social media analytics report from the previous month for one of our clients. He went over the typical measurements that many business/brand owners usually to equate to success - page views, number of followers and subscribers, and the amount of time followers spent on a business’s’ website.
Whilst reading Margaret J. Wheatley’s article “What Do We Measure and Why?”, the old adage “Quality over quantity” came to mind. Despite how often we may cite this proverb, it doesn’t seem to ring true. As Wheatley remarks, we assess each other using numbers all the time. We make judgements based on waistline measurements, GPA percentage, salary, and so forth, whether we like to admit it or not. Wheatley argues that society tends to take on the mentality that “It is numbers and only numbers that define and make visible what is real.” But this limited, numbers-oriented way of thinking can prevent real progress from happening in the workplace and outside of it. She believes that while measurements are critical, it’s also important to allow feedback to dictate what necessary steps need to be taken in order for an organization to reach its goals. “All life thrives on feedback and dies without it,” she writes. “We have to know what is going on around us, how our actions impact others, how the environment is changing, how we're changing. If we don't have access to this kind of information, we can't adapt or grow.” It’s easy to get caught up in the vanity metrics that were discussed in this week’s first video lecture. But as my work colleague noted, it’s more important to track the success of your company’s campaign beyond these vanity metrics. Vanity metrics, as we know, can range from a business’s number of followers/registered users, page views, the amount of time spent on a site, and “likes.” Numbers have their place of course, but they’re not everything. A large following doesn’t mean much if most of one’s followers turn out to be spam accounts. The longer one spends on a business’s webpage would seem to indicate a successful digital marketing campaign, however, some visitors may have simply left the page open while doing other activities. And even if you do get a high amount of traffic to your page, users may only stay on that one page before deciding to turn their attention elsewhere - what social media managers call “bounce rate.” Wheatley’s beliefs about how results should be measured directly relates to my line of work. Each month, we must provide clients regular reports outlining the effectiveness of their social media campaigns. The success of a business is not solely contingent on factors like number of followers and “likes;” both digital marketing managers and their clients have to consider other KPIs (key performance indicators) and elements that may impact their goals over the month. For example, if a business does not experience much traffic or generate significant activity during the month of September, that business may perceive their campaign as a failure. What they might not have considered are external factors that may be causing less traffic. In September, customers may be less inclined to go onto a business’s website or social media pages to buy a product or service, especially if that business is geared towards working adults/parents. The leisure days of summer are over, school is starting up again, and life generally gets busier as fall begins. Additionally, there may be algorithm updates that are causing your content to show up less in your customers’ newsfeeds. That’s why it’s critical for social media managers to measure more than just vanity metrics. User engagement, reach, and conversions are a few key areas social media experts use to determine the effectiveness of a campaign. A campaign, product, or service will resonate with an audience if they are constantly talking about or sharing your content (user engagement), accessing your content from all over cyberspace via shares, promoted posts, or through their newsfeed, (reach), and converting from ‘window shopper’ to customer because of your call-to-action (conversion). What businesses have to do if these numbers aren’t where they want them to be is determine what strategies in the past have been successful in catching the audience’s attention. But they also need to not be hard on themselves if there’s less social media activity during busier months. These kinds of metrics invite one to answer some of the questions Wheatley asks in her article. A good marketing professional is using measures that “are permeable rather than rigid,” as Wheatley suggests, inviting one to look beyond the numbers and see lower numbers not as a failure, but as an opportunity to create new, engaging content. This will ultimately allow a business/organization to grow, expand their critical thinking and creative skills, and redefine the meanings of both measurement and success.
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