Four key metrics for social media

If you start acting in social media, you will get dizzy about the data available. There are at least 100 ways to measure social media.

But according to Web 2.0 Expo presentation of Margaret Francis, head of product strategy at social media monitoring vendor Lithium, we need to “Measure strategy, not stuff.”

Driving 60 miles is just data. Driving 60 miles where 35 miles is allowed, is information 😉
Social media is not about the tools, but about the things you do with the tools. So Margaret advise us to focus on the goals we have with our social media activities, not on the amount of followers itself. Yes, you need to measure the amount of followers too, but for a higher purpose. See slide 23 about metrics and KPIs.

Focus on four applied metrics is her advice:
1. Brand perception:Customer satisfaction, likeliness to do do business with you our buy you products.
2. Marketing efficiency: check your web analytics, how much traffic comes from social media?
3. Revenue growth: at the end we all want extra sales but it starts with extra downloads, registrations etc.
4. Support savings: social media is almost realtime market research so use it and save money.

So 5.000 extra followers for your competitor and just 3.500 extra followers for you might be not bad at all. It all depends on what you and your competitor do with these extra followers.

Source: econsultancy.