Your business measures effectiveness daily. Whether it is sales revenue, lead time or gross margin, your company’s success is quantified by metrics to determine whether what you are doing is successful or needs more attention. Your social media strategy should be held under the same scrutiny. Below, we’ve outlined which factors you should be analyzing within your social media portfolio.
Engagement
Are you posting engaging content? Measuring your engagement metric on your social media channel will tell you just that. Putting out consistent content can be done fairly easily. For a refresher, read one of our latest blogs, 3 Big Reasons Why You Need a Strategic Social Media Calendar. To see higher engagement numbers, your content actually has to be something your followers want to engage with. The most engaging posts are called “viral” content and could include anything from tying a recent meme into your brand to recreating a TikTok trend. However, if you are going to recreate a piece of content, it is important you are tying it back to your brand. Though, not all content needs to have the goal of “going viral.” The purpose of the content should be to learn more about your followers while engaging them so they too can learn more. Your engagement number will increase the more people like, share, tag or comment on your post. Asking questions, posting videos and showing people within your organization are a few ways to create more engaging content.
Reach
Reach measures the amount of people who see a post. The larger your following on the platform, the larger your reach should be. However, the number of followers doesn’t necessarily mean your content will reach more people than a page with fewer followers. Engagement and reach are tied together. If your piece of content is receiving more engagement on a post, it will increase the chances of it penetrating the algorithm and showing the post to users outside of your follower list. On Facebook, this allows you to “Invite” users to follow your page. With Instagram and Twitter, you are able to see these new observers as potential customers. You are given the option to “Follow” the new users and organically grow your page. It is important to note, your content will not always reach the number of followers you have. With a higher increase in social media companies monetizing their software, it can be advantageous to incorporate some form of social media advertising to stay relevant in the constantly evolving environment.
Impressions
In comparison to reach, impressions are how many times your content is viewed. Where reach counts a single user one time, impressions can count a single user multiple times. One of your followers might see a post you publish at 8:35AM when they log into Instagram but then see the same post after dinner when they are scrolling again. Impressions are a great way to measure the frequency of your posts. Impressions should always be a higher number than reach. In contrast to reach, impressions should reflect a closer number to the number of followers you have on a platform.
Followers
How awesome is it to surpass a follower milestone? Whether it is on your personal Instagram account where you post pictures of your food and pets or your business’ Facebook account, counting the followers is an endorphin boost. Increasing your followers is similar to increasing prospective customers. The more followers you have, the higher chance you have to increase your engagement, reach and impressions. Solely increasing your followers to a goal doesn’t mean your social media success has been achieved, though. The more followers you have, the more that can go wrong. Make sure you are monitoring opportunities to engage with users on behalf of your account. Also be prepared to answer questions, receive feedback and appropriately answer negative interactions.
If you or your company are challenged by producing consistent and relevant social media content that is performing in the four major categories above, we want to help! Contact us at www.baerpm.com today!
