One of the most attractive things about social media marketing is how measurable it.
Want to know how many clicks your Twitter feed gets on Mondays vs Wednesdays? No problem. How about the number of followers you’ve added over the last 6 months? If you’re keeping even a casual eye on the number of followers you have, that’s child’s play.
The problem a lot of nonprofits are running into is that they have too much data, and do not know what to do with it.
Google Analytics alone has 9 different categories, with 46 subsections listed underneath them. That’s a lot of data. It’s that deluge of data that nonprofits are having trouble managing, and with good reason.
While across the major social media networks there are a seemingly infinite number of analytics, there is a hierarchy of importance among them.
If your nonprofit is struggling with what analytics to start tracking, here are a few, on the most prominent social networking sites, to get you started.
- @mentions: On Twitter, as your probably know, putting an ‘@’ symbol in front of someone’s Twitter handle hyperlinks to their profile, and counts as an @mention. This analytic is important because it signifies your nonprofit’s density within the online conversation you’re looking to be a part of on Twitter. The more @mentions, the more you’re being talked about, and, ultimately, you have a greater chance of being seen online.
- Impressions: Your nonprofit is creating great content on its blog, and running exciting contests on its social media feeds. Great! Your next mission is getting that engaging and well researched content in front of as many people as possible.
Knowing when to post to Twitter is the first step in increasing the number of impressions your content receives. Here’s an infographic we posted a while back that has helped us increase our reach on social media!
- Clicks: You think your content is engaging, interesting, and relevant. But do your followers mirror that thought? The easiest way to tell if your content is resonating with your audience is by tracking the number of clicks it’s getting. More clicks = more relevant to your audience.
Now, just rinse, repeat, and watch the number of clicks your Twitter feeds sees grow.
- Total reach: In Facebook’s attempt to generate more advertising revenue (it worked), they’ve effectively squashed the amount of organic reach an organization’s posts on the popular social media site can generate. Therefore, if your nonprofit is not spending money advertising on Facebook, differentiating between paid reach, organic post reach, and organic reach just doesn’t matter.
Because it is all encompassing, and keeping it simple, take note of your total reach and move on.
- New page likes: This one is simple, but you’d be surprised just how many nonprofits do not pay much attention to it. Knowing how many followers you’re adding week-to-week, or month-to-month can provide valuable insight into why and how you’re adding those followers. If you’re running campaigns targeted towards increasing that number, if you don’t know how many you added when you weren’t putting so much emphasis on it, how do you know whether or not it’s being effective?
Getting started tracking analytics can be difficult, but if you start with these 5 bite sized chunks of data, increasing the number of statistics you cover will seem like no big deal.
Check out part one of this series where we cover what website analytics you should be tracking.
