Andy Sitta, Social Media Consultant at Organic looks at how to know what success looks like in social media campaigns and how to measure it effectively.
3. What is the value of
social for brands?
“41% of companies said they had no idea
whether or not their social media efforts were
actually paying off.” (Convince and Convert)
“88% of marketing professionals didn’t feel
they could accurately measure the
effectiveness of their social media
campaigns.” (Fast Company)
the good old question
#TheSocialStandard
4. IT STARTS WITH AN OBJECTIVE
#TheSocialStandard
Business
Objective
Social
Objective
Right
Platform
Right
Content
It is not that hard to provide measurable outcomes for your social activities, but you have
to know what you’re trying to achieve.
In reality, every business is different and hence, social will play a different role each
time. Not everyone needs a Twitter account or to be on Snapchat. But as long as a
brand knows what are its key objectives, the activities on social should present
themselves naturally.
5. each objective = different
metric(s)
#TheSocialStandard
Social is rather complex – ‘to engage your fans’ is not the only possible objective. Social
can be utilised as a traffic driver or a means for customer service. Putting the right
objective in place will ensure brands’ ability to measure ROI.
Awareness -> CPV, reach, social mentions
Engagement -> CPE, Engament rate
Traffic -> CPC
Conversion -> cost per download, cost per sign up
Customer care -> Avg. response time
6. Step 1: understand what’s behind each metric
Step 2: know how to use it
KNOWING THE METRICS
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7. REACH VS. IMPRESSIONS
Do you really know these
metrics?
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RELEVANCe SCORE
CPM
VIDEO VIEWS
8. LIKE -> How good are you at being relevant?
COMMENT -> How good are you at driving conversations?
SHARE -> How good are you at spreading the message?
ENGAGEMENT RATE -> How good are you at getting people’s attention?
All engagements are not
equal
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9. QUALITY VS. QUANTITY
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stay on the light side…
• Quality pays off in the long term
• The only way to build engaged communities
Getting the numbers up quickly is tempting,
might look good in the short term, but there’s
little value.
11. looking at the whole picture
#TheSocialStandard
Social
Web
Online
Offline
Users’ journey
What’s being measured
Social shouldn’t be in a vacuum. It
works best when it resonates with
other marketing communications &
activities. At the same time, it has to
be measured accordingly.
12. 1 + 1 = 3
Using common sense
#TheSocialStandard
These are just numbers after all. We need numbers to back up our decisions. This is a
universal fact, not just in marketing. But as professionals we have a duty to make sure
the numbers we are using represent the reality or at least are as close to it as they
can be. Ideally, we should be using numbers to inform our decisions, not just to boost
our egos or cover up our mistakes.
13. Start with defining your objectives
Choose the right metrics
Understand the metrics & rethink how you’re using them
Go for quality over quantity
Look at social from a wider angle
Use your head and test hypotheses using a T&L approach
Summary
#TheSocialStandard
Can’t say it all in 15 minutes. But I’ll try to make you think differently about social metrics and how to measure social activities.
Stats:
41% of companies said they had no idea whether or not their social media efforts were actually paying off
88% of 750 surveyed marketing professionals didn’t feel they could accurately measure the effectiveness of their social media campaigns. Fifty-two percent said that dealing with social media ROI was their biggest frustration. (Fast Company)
Social ROI has been a topic of passionate discussions since the beginnings of social media. One camp would argue that social is largely overestimated and doesn’t add much value to most businesses, the other camp would argue that the lack of tangible results is mostly an inability of brands to utilise social media marketing correctly, specifically, that there is an underestimation of social strategy and non-presence of the right social objectives.
The truth is, it’s almost impossible to estimate the ROI without measuring the performance on social. Gut feeling might tell you that there’s something in it or you may have a feeling that’s it’s a waste of time, but without measuring it, you can never know for sure.
Without a doubt, you can allocate a measurable outcome to your social activities as long as you know what you’re trying to achieve. In other words, you have to start with objective.
In reality, every business is different and hence, social will play a different role each time. Not everyone needs a Twitter account or to be on Snapchat. But as soon as a brand knows what are its key objectives, the activities on social should present themselves naturally.
Each platform is different and brands need to treat them that way. The first question shouldn’t be how do I utilise Instagram. It should rather be, what is my business objective? This will subsequently inform the Instagram strategy.
Different content types (why are videos so ‘successful’?; videos are great for awareness but less effective for traffic - better quality traffic?)
Social is rather complex – ‘to engage your fans’ is not the only possible objective. Social can be utilised as a traffic driver or a means for customer service. Putting a right objective in place will ensure brands’ ability to measure ROI.
Each objective requires different metric:
Awareness -> CPV, reach, social mentions
Engagement -> CPE
Traffic -> CPC
Conversion -> cost per download, cost per sign up
Customer care -> Avg. response time
Organic value through paid benchmarks
In social, we use a large variety of metrics. The basic rule is: you have to know what is behind those metrics. Once you know what these metrics represent, you are able to pick the right ones to measure your objectives and at the end of the day, see the value of social.
Often, you will need more than one metric to evaluate the overall performance. You will also need to remember the objective as this will determinate if the numbers are good or not (e.g. retargeting will be more expensive than targeting general audience, but the quality is usually better).
4 examples (no time for all, let’s do 4 to illustrate the point)… Poll time
Reach vs. Impressions: yes, there is a difference. Platforms use them in a different ways (e.g. ER). You can discover frequency -> negative effects?
Relevancy score: a great indicator of ads effectiveness, but strongly linked with the ad’s objective (e.g. driving traffic through videos). Platforms want high spend, not efficient results.
Video views: is 3 seconds view a good result? what about video completions? what about CTA? - popular content = video views are part of the engagement
CPM: traditional marketers love this metric - it’s familiar, not so effective on social though (algorithms)
There are many hidden metrics behind the famous ‘engagement’. At the end of the day, each of these metric has a different value - again, this will depend on your initial objective.
Other engagement metrics:
VIDEO VIEW | LINK CLICK | HASHTAG CLICK ETC. (What is the value here?)
Stay on the light side of the force:
Quality pays of in the long term
The only way to build engaged communities
Avoid the dark side: Getting the numbers up quickly is tempting, might look good in the short term, but there’s little value.
Like to win competitors / buying irrelevant followers = drop in reach & engagement rate
How to get quality metrics? (e.g. looking at value, relevance, linked with objective, point system)
Most overrated social feature:
It’s more like Twitter listening
Inaccurate
Most underrated social feature:
Knowing what your audience wants
Typing into conversations
Fighting negative sentiment | improving customer service | building better products/services
Everyone talks about social listening and yet, because of all the privacy restrictions on LinkedIn, Instagram & Facebook, we should really be calling it a Twitter listening.
Another challenge is linked with its inaccuracy (geo locations, sentiment, lack of historic data…).
However, the general principe is awesome. It gets you closer to your customers and helps you to identify the right type of content your audience would appreciate. You can also get into the conversation and make sure that negative mentions are (where possible) turned around and that constructive feedback is taken into account.
Monitoring mentions is also a good indicator os overall share of voice on social.
Social shouldn’t be in a vacuum. Social works best when it resonates with other marketing communications & activities. At the same time, it has to be measured accordingly.
E.g. When driving people to your website, don’t just look at CPC, look at the traffic quality as well (what is users’ behaviour?)
When running an awareness campaign, don’t just look at reach, look if there was an increase in online mentions.
These are just numbers after all.
We need numbers to back up our decisions. This is a universal fact, not just in marketing. But as professionals we have a duty to make sure the numbers we are using represent the reality or at least are as close to it as they can be.
Ideally, we should be using numbers to inform our decisions, not just to boost our egos or cover up our mistakes. Yet, it is crucial to question the results instead of following them blindly. The truth is, the initial results might be often misleading.
Checker: it should fit the whole picture
T&L