Never Beg for Your Social Media Budget Again – Social Media Metrics That Matter

in Social Media

Today we are wrapping up our series on social media metrics that matter. No doubt about it, Avinash Kaushik saved the best for last. Economic Value is going to be your game changer. Sure it sounds like a pretty bold statement, but if you aren’t using this metric you aren’t showing the company your true value.

We are defining Economic Value as the sum of short and long-term revenue plus cost savings. Granted this sounds pretty intimidating and it still isn’t very descriptive. Really, short-term and long-term revenue can be viewed as micro and macro conversions, this probably sounds a bit more familiar. Social media micro and macro conversions are still a bit fuzzy as far as what is appropriate to measure and how to assign a valuation.

Kaushik suggests looking at macro conversions like a subscription or a follow or anything that gives you permission to push content. In particular, you want to measure the growth of any of these over a period of about a month. Obsessing over the day to day up and downs isn’t necessary, like when you are losing weight and they say only weigh yourself once a week. The eventual goal would be for your social media following to make the leap to your company or brand website.

Micro conversions for social media are going to be those three other social media metrics that we covered. Anytime you have a non-direct follower commenting on your tweet someone in your audience retweeted. Or you have a friend of someone in your audience like a post that was shared. So many of the actions that your second level network make are micro conversions that get you closer to the subscriber or follower. And of course, the secret to making these micro conversions into macro conversion is…? You guessed it: understanding your audience, creating content that is valuable to them, and giving them a reason to interact with your brand

Do yourself a favor, if you haven’t already, and set yourself up with a Google Analytics account. You can easily track micro conversions shown in this beautiful screen grab that Kaushik provided.

Cost savings comes in as a conservation of manpower from your marketing team. You are creating a team of marketers that you don’t even have to pay. Your brand ambassadors will be working for you long after you have left your desk for the night. They’ll be spreading the good word on the weekends while you enjoy your life. These people are going to allow you to do so much more with your social media budget. The only thing they ask in return is quality content that is worth their time and attention.

Tracking these metrics consistently and deliberately making adjustments for testing is going to change your life. You are going to have the knowledge to improve your posts, attract more audience, and ultimately show that what you do every day on social media makes a difference to your company’s bottom line.