While relationship building – connecting with, listening to and serving your audience – is a key tenet of utilizing social media for business, it’s important to remember social media gives us powerful tools and metrics to evolve our approach to marketing.
Think strategically about entering the social space. Why are you there? Who is your audience and where are they? What do you hope to accomplish? How will you accomplish it? Among the most prominent benefits of the social web is the sheer amount of data you’re able to collect. Quantifying the impact of public relations has always been a struggle. But with social media management tools, Google analytics and our ever-increasing connection to a digital world, we’re able to directly align campaign goals with measurable data. You will know if your campaign is making an impact. You will know what works. And you will know what you have to do to make it better.
What should you do with that data?
- Watch the engagement rate. Is some content driving better engagement than the rest? If you’re moving your audience, keep it up.
- Watch your conversions. Does engagement serve your strategy or do you need to drive a specific action? Engagement in Facebook will help improve the reach into your audience and help build that audience. Monitor the conversion path from Facebook (or other platforms) to website, cart and eventual sale to track the desired result.
- Define your KPIs. Set key performance indicators to understand how your strategies and content are performing. Are you driving conversions for your .com, eliciting contributions from your audience or booking meetings? KPIs are your scorecard.
Stop to understand how this serves your marketing strategies – and what defines success – and you’ve taken a step toward unlocking a powerful tool.
Colin Deval is a PR/social media specialist at Milwaukee-based Core Creative Inc. (@Core_Creative)
