Bill Eager
Companies and brands that use Social as a vehicle for brand awareness and lead generation are often faced with the challenge of defining and measuring metrics to demonstrate the value of their efforts…. and calculate a positive ROI. The low hanging fruit of metrics is number of fans, likes and views. They indicate volume…. but not value!
Engagement with your content is much more significant! It shows you that the content you spend so much time to create and share resonates with your target market. Indeed, content, story and sentiment drive engagement. Great content is based upon stories that have an emotional bond with your audience. The stories create and generate sentiment. This, in turn, creates the engagement you are looking for.
This means you need to focus on specific metrics to understand and evaluate the stories that you create and share. Metrics for resonance of your stories can include:
- comments
- re-tweets
- number of shares
- migration across social platforms
- total engagement on all platforms
- time spent reading/viewing
- click throughs to landing pages
Taken together, these measurements show you which content performs the best andwhich social platforms work best for different types of content. This, in turn, directs the creation of new content. A successful blog strategy is to identify a target audience and the specific subject matter that resonates. Then, with deep social listening, discover the best blogs and social platforms to share stories based on this subject matter. The metrics you watch and track should create useful insights:
- Does the sentiment of your story resonate with audiences? (see and record how many comments you get)
- What stories create the greatest viral lift? (how quickly are they shared across networks)
- What stories engage prospects and customers and translate into meaningful actions? (actions such as click throughs to landing pages)
- What stories drive discussions, leads and customers?
- What stories bring audiences to your web site, and then what happens when they arrive?
