Metrics in the sense of social media usually have to do with page views of a blog, Twitter followers, re-tweets of your tweets, or Facebook fans, or many other measuring sticks to see if your efforts are effective. This is an important first step when implementing any strategy for social media. We have talked before about social media strategy and what that means. Metrics are an essential element to see if your strategy is working. How do you measure success? For many non-profits, success is measured in money raised, and that is the ultimate goal, but social media measurement serves more as an indication of milestones reached on the way to that end goal. Do you know how many people you have to ask for a donation before a dollar is given? If you don’t know the answer to that one, ask. This is known in business circles as cost per acquisition or CPA. Social media can help you increase the number of people asked for a donation which will, in turn, raise the level of donations or your company’s CPA. The metrics help you to see if what you are doing works.
I like to take each social media tool and apply to it a metric or a list of metrics. For a blog, I like to determine the number of page views, the number of unique visitors, the RSS subscribers, comments, and social shares and put that together in its own package. Then you add in specifics like positive, negative, and indifferent blog posts about your company, positive and negative comments, and the same for tweets or Facebook shares and make a list of those. You get the idea.
There are services that allow you to track your metrics. I like companies like Radian6 and Filtrbox among others, and will be getting a demo of a new company soon. Knowledge in the sense of metrics in social media equals power. You need to empower your social media strategy with metrics.
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Tags: blogging, comments, Facebook, followers, metrics, page views, Twitter, unique visitors
Metrics and reporting is definitely key to calculating success. Genuine I have another company that only works with nonprofits and social media which focuses on metrics. Write me jason@smallact.com, I would love to give you a demo!
Would be happy to take a look at the demo. I am trying to see them all! I’ll pop you an email.