On a recent Adweek Webinar, Chief Marketing Officer at NetBase Solutions, Paige Leidig, shared that 81 percent of executives don’t feel like their company is leveraging enough from social media. “There’s so much information out there, literally hundreds of thousands of social media sites, that it’s really hard to keep track of all of their metrics,” he said.
Companies need to understand why consumers are purchasing their products, as well as the key metrics that they should be measuring. “Aligning metrics with your business strategy is key to your business success,” Leidig adds.
Leidig, along with NetBase’s Sr. Director for Product Marketing, Mike Baglietto, shared what they have deemed the nine most crucial social media metrics companies should be considering when investigating their performance:
1. Mentions: Mentions qualify how people talk about a brand, but businesses should also look at the channels where they were mentioned– your own, sponsored, public or earned.
2. Engagement: By measuring customers’ engagement in these three different channels, companies can figure out not only who is mentioning them, but also what people are saying about them and their competitors.
3. Sentiment: Understanding consumers’ likes and dislikes gives you the attitude towards engagement.” Once brands understand this, product and service improvement becomes a simple task.
4. Passion: While passion and sentiment are two very similar categorizations, passion refers to the intensity of the sentiment. And passion drives action, “If people are passionate about your product they’ll be willing to stand in line for hours to get it.” Baglietto said.
5. Influencers/Detractors: Brands’ biggest fans are often the best influencers. When identifying potential influencers, “Followers are not enough. Celebrities aren’t either. Even though they are important, people who connect deeply with the target audience can be more beneficial.” Surprisingly, detractors can also be important influencers. By spotting where conversations expressing dissatisfaction are, companies can start communicating and change consumers’ attitude and behaviors.
6. Top Content: The top content that resonates with the audience is what drives engagement, sentiment and passion. “Visual content has been proven to be 40 times more likely to get shared in other media sites, specially earned channels.”
7. Top Channels: With such a broad spectrum of social media platforms, some of them can get overlooked. The panelists gave the example of the Pocky brand, being considered unpopular in the U.S. until they learned that Tumblr was the largest source of where the conversations were happening.
8. Top Locations: Knowing where and what your audience is interacting with will increase targeting possibilities and expand your consumers.
9. Share of Voice: Include mentions of your main competitors in your social media monitoring to know where your brand fits into the overall conversation.
Arantxa Hernandez is a Venezuelan writer, copywriter and designer currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Savannah College of Art and Design.
