Mentions: I always liken mentions to what people say about you behind your back. I find that most times a company is given a “mention” on social platforms, the original commenter doesn’t even follow the company. You need to capture and acknowledge what people say about your company via mentions on all channels. Analyzing this key data can help to measure your social media growth.
Tracking unique metrics from each platform
To get a true measure of all metrics, you need a solid understanding of how well your company is performing on all the social media platforms. The good news is that most social networks offer their own native analytics, which makes mining metrics much easier. In this section, I look at some of the ways the popular social media channels offer this data.
Facebook Insights
If your company has created a Facebook Business page (and if you haven’t, get on that!), you can analyze some key data metrics within the social network’s channel, as shown in Figure 3-2:
Engagement: The number of likes, clicks, and shares your posts have generated. One useful feature allows you to compare metrics from one week with metrics from another week.
Post Reach: The number of people who have seen any of your content.
Impressions: The number of times your company’s page is displayed.
Organic Page Likes: The number of people who like your page without coming from an ad campaign. This metric highlights the total amount of likes, as well as the number of new page likes on a week-by-week basis. It also helps you understand if your Facebook presence is growing at a healthy rate.
Paid Likes: The number of people who have liked your page who came from your ad campaign.
Reactions: The number of people who have engaged with your posts by using the various Facebook reaction emojis.
Unlikes: The number of people who unliked your Facebook page this week. If this metric ever spikes, it’s worth investigating the reason, such as a controversial post.
FIGURE 3-2: Facebook Insights offers a wealth of audience metric data for you to analyze.
Instagram Insights
Instagram Insights provides in-depth key data metrics broken down into two sections — one focused on your individual posts and the other on your profile as a whole. Here are some of the key data metrics to capture:
Account Impressions: The number of times your posts and stories were viewed
Total Reach: How many unique accounts have viewed your posts and stories
Website Clicks: The number of people who have clicked the website URL in your profile
Profile Visits: The number of people who have clicked to view your account page
Post Likes: The number of likes your posts have received
Post Comments: The number of comments accumulated on any given post
Posts Saved: The number of times your posts have been saved
Follows: The number of people who have started following you over a period of time
Twitter Analytics
Twitter for Business allows you to have in-depth data access to your analytics, as shown in Figure 3-3. The dashboard gives you a summary of your content and other key data. Here are some of the key metrics to analyze:
Engagement Rate: A whole array of data, including link clicks, retweets, favorites. and replies to your tweets
Followers: The total number of Twitter followers your company has gained, with the ability to compare the rates over a period of time
Link Clicks: The total number of people who have clicked the website URL in your profile
Mentions: The number of times your username was mentioned by others
Profile Visits: The number of people who have visited your Twitter profile
Replies: The number of times your tweets received replies
Retweets: The number of retweets received by others with a date comparison features
Tweet Impressions: The number of times your tweets have been viewed, whether they were engaged with or not
LinkedIn Analytics
You can access LinkedIn Analytics through your company page, which shows you all the social media data going into your LinkedIn page. Here are the top metrics to look out for:
Interactions: The number of comments, likes, and shares your posts and overall company profile have received over a period of time
Clicks: The number of clicks on your posts and on your company page
Engagement: The number of interactions compared to the number of impressionsFIGURE 3-3: Twitter Analytics helps you break down your key data to help you understand which types of posts resonate with your audience.
Followers: The number of new followers, which includes any that came through a sponsored post
Impressions: The number of times your posts were visible to other LinkedIn users
Choosing meaningful social media data versus vanity metrics
It’s easy to get carried away with metrics without really understanding what they mean in context. In other words, it’s just as important to analyze your data as it is to collect it.
I, too, am guilty of becoming obsessed with vanity metrics (any social media metrics that make your company’s presence look good but do very little in terms of engagement), such as follower counts and likes. The fact is, the data from vanity metrics can’t help you measure your company’s past and current performance in a way that allows you to create a strategy for your gamification marketing campaign. These data points can look impressive when you’re looking at them on a report. But, unfortunately, they may mean very little without some context.
