How to learn what went right
Once you start posting to social media, you start discovering which content, timing, and frequency is right for you. How exactly? It helps to have a sense of which social media stats to look for, where to look for them, and how to assess their success. We'll cover all this in today's lesson. :)
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So ... is that good?
I've found myself asking this question so many times when looking up my social media stats. I'll see a number of clicks or retweets and not quite know what to think of it. Is it good? Is it average? Is it, gulp, bad?
I've been trying to learn as much as I can about this aspect of social media marketing, and I'm very happy to share with what I've come up with so far.
First things first, it's uber-important to know where to look for your social media stats.
If you're managing multiple social media accounts - either a Twitter and a Facebook for instance, or multiple Twitters for multiple arms of your brand - it's best to get a reporting tool. While most major social networks have basic analytics built into the site, it’s just a little easier to seek and find this information from an all-encompassing dashboard.
Buffer, SumAll, HootSuite, and others have some great options here.
Once you've got a reporting tool with all your stats, you can move on to the strategy. How will you know which of your social media posts are performing best?
Here's a system we're working with. It's heavy on testing and iterating so that you keep improving your social sharing strategies.
Set a benchmark. After two weeks or a month of sharing, you can go back through your stats and find the average number of clicks, shares, likes, and comments per post. This’ll be your benchmark going forward. You can come back and update this number at any time as your following and influence grows.
Test something new. We’re open to testing just about anything at Buffer. We’re in the midst of some tests right now on our Twitter account. Do Twitter-optimized images gain more clicks than non-optimized images? Does capitalization matter? We’ll often hear about someone’s new strategy or get a new idea and then test right away.
Did it work? Check the stats from your test versus the stats of your benchmark. If your test performed well, then you can implement the changes into your regular strategy. And once your test is over, test something new!
Further reading: Which social media stats are best?
Once you've got this process in place, you'll be all set to go with improving the way you share to social media!
Today's action item: Create benchmarks for your 2 most meaningful stats.