What Are the 4 Key Metric Types for Social Marketing Automation?

How effective is your social media marketing automation platform? Read on to understand 4 key metric types to gauge the effectiveness of social marketing automation. 

Now that you have implemented a social media marketing automation tool that suits all your needs, here comes the part where you need to check if it is working for you or not. To determine the effectiveness of your social marketing automation platform, you need to check how it is impacting your social media presence, i.e., you need to measure the social media metrics. You need to assess whether are you reaching the right people, are people engaging with you, and are people buying from you?

THE ULTIMATE MARKETING AUTOMATION BUYERS GUIDE FOR 2020 AND BEYOND

Pick Or Upgrade To The Right Marketing Automation Solution To Power Your Growth Story.

Download

In this article, we will go over the 4 key types of metrics for social marketing automation.

Note: Keep in mind that not every metric will apply to your brand or product. Choose only those metrics that are relevant to your product and your active platforms.

1.Efficiency Metrics

The goal of automation is to bring in efficiency to work. Having a social media management tool in place gives you the right amount of time to focus on other aspects of your job.

Efficiency metrics tell us how time-effective your social media team is with their activities.

• Posts per Period: This metric measures the number of updates or content posted for a defined period. You can break it down further for each of the social media platforms as well.


• Average Response Time: Tools like Buffer Reply, HootSuite, Sprout Social, etc. unify and streamline your social media inboxes. Average response time measures the average time recorded for a team member to respond to social comments and queries.
   

Also Read: Measuring [brand] love: The Art and Science

2.Reach Metrics

Reach metrics signify how far your content is spreading within your audience. Here are the three key reach metrics to track:

• Impressions: This metric measures the number of times a post-popped-up in someone’s news feed. Impressions tend to be fuzzy metrics because, although a post might have shown up in someone’s newsfeed, it doesn’t mean they have viewed it.


• Video Views: Number of views your videos received on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. Also, video views are counted differently for different platforms. For example, Facebook and Instagram count a view after three seconds of watching a video whereas for YouTube it’s around 30 seconds.


• Follower Growth: This metric refers to people who have opted to receive your updates on social media by liking your Facebook page or following you on Twitter and so on.
   

Also Read: Tips to perfect Social Media Marketing: With Michael Hess, Storyful

3.Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics are important because they tell whether your followers are interacting with your content or not. A massive following on social media does not necessarily mean that you’ll drive engagement. Engagement metrics are also a good indicator of how well your content is resonating with your audience.  Let’s look at a few engagement metrics.

• Clicks: Clicks measure how many people clicked on the posts that led them to your website. They represent how well-crafted your copy or image was that it enticed people to click on it.


• Likes: If people like what they’re reading or watching they’ll hit the like button. Likes also signal to the social platform that the post deserves more attention, hence the algorithm will pick it up to show it to more people.


• Comments: Your content should invite people to start a conversation. Ask them what they feel or what their opinions are about specific topics. Comments are better than likes because people invest their time to write down a comment. It is an active form of engagement.


• Shares: People sharing, retweeting or repinning your posts is significant praise for your content. Therefore, shares are a good indicator of the quality of your posts.


• Brand Mentions: People tagging or mentioning you in their posts or tweets shows that they’re talking about you. It is a good sign that your brand is getting tagged, but you must always check if the post sentiment is positive or negative.
   

Also Read: Why It’s Time to Shine the Light on ‘Dark Social’

4.Conversion Metrics

Every marketing activity is ultimately mapped to sales. Social media is no different. Along with efficiency, the point of social media automation is also to make people buy from you. Here are four key conversion metrics.

• Leads: To understand if people are willing to buy from you, start tracking leads generated through social media platforms. Post links to gated content on your accounts and check if people are downloading the content.


• Conversion Rate: Conversion rate in this context could be the percentage of website visitors to leads or leads to sales. You need to measure how many leads you can get from your social media activities, and how many of them are becoming your customers.


• Revenue Generated: This is the metric your C-level executives will be interested in the most. This metric tells how much money social media is bringing in.


• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): When you know the CAC, you can lower it by nurturing your existing leads on social media. This metric depends on the first three metrics we described in this article.
   

Also Read: Strategizing social media marketing to gain bigger impacts: With Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CEO at Socialbakers

From simply the ability to schedule social media updates to respond to queries and managing paid ads, social media automation tools have evolved by leaps and bounds.

When you incorporate the above metrics into your reporting structure, you’ll be able to figure out the ideal time to post updates, when your audience is most active and so on. Use these metrics to establish a feedback loop to better your social media efforts continuously.

What are the other social marketing metrics most relevant to your brand? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/social-media-marketing-2/what-are-the-4-key-metric-types-for-social-marketing-automation/