The measure of success varies from person to person, which holds it firmly in that ambiguous gray area labelled “subjective.” The measures of success, or performance, in the social media world are reported through metrics. Metrics identify the performance of specific strategies and report the success of your social media activities. Your metrics will report varying degrees of success, depending on factors such as time since implementation, sub-activities that feed into a larger measurement such as engagement, and those in which you can directly influence like search engine optimization (SEO).
If you are working with one of our marketing technology partners (AdvisorStream, Broadridge, FMG Suite or LeadingResponse) you will receive metric reporting and/or will have access to an online dashboard that will provide you with metrics specific to you. This should be the case if you work with any social media consultant or subscription company.
If you are working independently, either on your own or with your staff, it’s important that you understand the metric reporting you need to measure and where to source that information. To align your metrics with your needs, create social media goals. From there, you’ll create measurement values that match your goals.
How you evaluate your strategies and success measurements will evolve as your social media grows. For instance, one of your earliest metrics might report on the number of followers you have gained on the types of content that creates the most engagement; or perhaps you want to know what kind of content has the most engagement from your target market. Down the road, you might be more concerned with measuring the best times of day to distribute content based on content type (meme, educational article, etc.) and lifestyle market (newlyweds, divorced, retired, etc.).
Resources
The 10 most important social media metrics to monitor
5 social media metrics that your business should be tracking