With the increase in social media marketing budget, it has become more important than ever to measure its efficacy. Today a number of social media monitoring tools are available. Some of these tools even have built in engagement components that enable you to take part in desired conversations. These tools also allow you to track and measure the conversations in which you participate. But a true social media measurement dash board is still missing. A social media measurement dashboard should include following metrics.
Social media views
This will include blog page views, Facebook page views, YouTube video views, Flickr photo views, in short, the total number of views across all your social media channels. This figure will give you an idea about the number of times users came across your brand on different social media channels.
Number of people expressing interest in your company
This number represents people who have come forward and expressed interest in your brand on various social channels. This metric will include Facebook fans, Twitter followers, blog subscribers, LinkedIn group members and YouTube friends and subscribers. These are the people with whom you need to start a conversation and develop a relationship.
Social media audience engagement and referrals
You can measure audience engagement using metrics like tweets and retweets, Facebook and YouTube interactions, blog comments and brand mentions in social media. All the social media efforts are made with the aim of driving social media users to your website to take desired action. This makes measurement of referrals critical. Some set up and configuration with your web analytics tool will help you measure the social media referrals.