In this episode of Actionable Marketing In Minutes we go over some ways to measure social media engagement.

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Problem

Do you feel like you’re spinning your social media wheels and getting nowhere fast? You may have done everything you know to do – starting with strategy, writing good content, and posting on channels you think would reach your target audience. But, it just doesn’t seem like you’re getting the results you wanted.

So, the question is: what are you missing?

Solution

Before we get to specifics, I’d like to point out: Social media marketing is important for all businesses. Yes, it’s true… While this podcast will touch on one aspect of it, I encourage you to download our Social Media Marketing Best Practices Guide for more insights and tips on how to effectively execute social media marketing programs. This ebook gives general guidelines as well as best practices by platform. Click the link in the podcast description to download this actionable guide to social media marketing.

Now, back to the problem at hand. To answer the question, “What Are You Missing,” you will need to learn a little more about social metrics – or, how to measure the effectiveness of your social media programs. There are dozens of metric elements that you could measure and analyze. But, for today, we’ll focus on social engagement.

As you likely know, engagement measures how much and how often your audience interacts with your social media – whether it’s a like, favorite or comment.

Also, there is a sub-element of engagement. It’s called sharing – or amplification. Amplification could be a retweet, share, reblog, or repin. Sharing is a great way to increase your exposure because it expands your message even further beyond your own audience. And it is an essential measure of the emotional attachment of your brand to your audience.

Most of the main channels support engagement in a variety of ways.

Let’s take a look at what you will want to use engagement metrics for:

1. You will use these metrics to develop and refine your strategy.

2. You’ll want to pay attention to the engaged demographics. If your engagement is NOT with whom you are attempting to target, make adjustments.

3. Be sure to monitor feedback of launches, campaigns or initiatives to measure success. To determine the percentage of potential audience participation, tally all the sharing metrics for the event and divide that number by your total reach. If you get 10%, you are really good, if you get 25%, you are a maestro, if you get anywhere near 50%, you can start selling your services.

4. Continually monitor your growth and performance on each of your social networks. Track your engagement rate over time to make sure you’re improving.

5. This is really important: You can increase your share or amplification in a myriad of ways, and you must continually explore who can help you. Influencers and brand advocates are two groups who can help. These are people who constantly engage with you. Consider how to utilize them to help you gain even more exposure.

Benefits

We plan on going into a deeper discussion on amplification, influencers and advocates in upcoming podcasts. Please stay tuned. There’s a lot to learn! In the meantime, today’s guidelines will help you understand how to monitor and adjust your social media strategies by using engagement metrics. I am confident you will notice increased user engagement and will start to see the results you’ve been working for.

We hope you’ve found this information helpful. Please connect with us on Twitter @DirectiveGroup or on LinkedIn and be sure to share it with in your networks using hashtag #actionablemarketing. Join us next time for more actionable marketing in minutes.