As businesses become more educated and hopefully sophisticated in their social networking efforts, are they understanding the importance of the metrics by which they measure social business ROI? So far organizations, for the most part, have relied almost solely on simple, standard metrics, such as the number of Facebook fans and likes or the number of Twitter followers and tweets, and so on to determine their success. And while those metrics are still important today, organizations need to develop more sophisticated metrics to measure their progress in meeting increasingly granular social objectives.

Which can makes it difficult to determine the social metrics that matter most, because what matters will differ depending on your organization’s size, industry, products, current goals for social, and so on. But some increasingly important social media metrics can be applied across the board and they can help you measure what you need to focus on to achieve your objectives.

1. Quality of fans and followers. You may have hundreds, or even thousands of fans on Facebook and or followers on Twitter, and while yes, these numbers still count, it’s critical to look beyond the numbers to the quality of those fans and followers. Think quality of followers, not quantity! In fact there are companies out there now that will allow you to actually purchase followers, but just looking popular will not measure an effective return on investment. By “knowing” your core business audience and organically targeting leads and connections that will truly be interested in your services, will help you earn a genuine online reputation.
2. Social demographics. Demographics are directly related to the quality of fans and followers, again by knowing exactly who those fans and followers are. This will help to ensure that any social initiatives are reaching your core audience and achieving your current and future business goals. It will also help to unearth potential new customers and guide your marketing, advertising, customer service, and product development tactics. Customer mapping will help you engage global and national fan demographics, consider other languages, age group of your followers, etc, will help you to see if there are market segments, and geographical pockets of customers that your current marketing strategies are not reaching yet. Utilizing social media modeling data and analytical tools can help you identify and “model” your users who better engage with brands from those who don’t.
3. Most popular pages, posts and tweets. By now, most organizations realize that to succeed at social marketing they need to maintain a consistent presence and dedicate resources to updating content and engaging with the audience. It’s easy to measure in pure numbers which pages, posts and tweets are most popular, but businesses need to take it a step further to determine why they were popular. Was it an email, a whitepaper, a tweet, a post or a blog that prompted the most interest? The metrics that can help you determine this will serve as a template to help you widen your net and cultivate customer relationships
4. Page views and click-thrus. Content marketing is making businesses realize the importance of their message and their online presence. Most companies are including white papers, how-to videos, podcasts, info-graphics, and other forms of content into their marketing strategies to engage existing and new customers, as well as to generate leads or sales. But even more relevant is knowing what content is being seen and, more importantly, shared.
5. Conversion. Conversion is a short and long term goal of every business, and it’s increasingly critical to measure what the social audience is doing as a result of the time they spend on your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social sites. Are they buying, signing up, or consuming as a result of Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest? These are just a few questions you need to know the answer to in a growing list of emerging social marketing metrics.

Natimark uses critical targeted data to effectively measure, predict and optimize your results to increase your ROI. Call us today to find out how we can customize a strategic marketing plan based on accurate, real-time predictive data that is relevant to your business. Natimark.com.