Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. We all know the definition of insanity. Then why are you doing social media marketing without checking your analytics and insights?
During the first week of each month you should take a look at the previous month’s analytics on your website, as well as, the insights on your social media business pages. Here’s what you need to look for….
- Did you meet your goals? You actually have to set SMART goals each month. You want your website visitors to keep increasing and your social media following to keep growing.
- Did your marketing efforts accomplish what you wanted? Conversions? Sales? Bookings? New Leads?
- Are you ranking on Google for the right keywords? Your SEO might need tweaking!
You should be checking your social media analytics and insights monthly. They tell you:
- The demographics of your fans and followers – this is important – are they your target market?
- Where they are located – if you’re local, you want a good majority in your local area. If they’re not, then you need to change your strategy and tactics to attract people closer to home.
- Age and gender – Do they represent your target? You “talk” differently to the various age groups and men and women
- Which posts got the most engagement? – Reach/Impressions are nice, but they tell you how many people had the potential to see your post. Engagement is likes, shares, clicks and comments.
- Which types of posts got the most engagement – pictures, videos, text, links?
All these tell you what’s working and what’s not working. Therefore, if what you’re doing is not reaching your target, then you need to adjust your marketing plan accordingly. (You do have a marketing plan, right?)
Your Website’s Analytics and Statistics give you Valuable Information also:
- How many unique visitors you had in any given time frame.
- New and returning visitors – this is important. Are your visitors converting?
- How many pages each visitor viewed while they were on their site.
- Which sites referred users to your site – social media and the search engines – this helps you plan your social media strategy. You focus on the networks that are driving people to your site
- Which are your most popular posts and pages – give them more of what they like!
- What they clicked on
- Time viewing – this is a Google Analytics feature which measures how long someone stayed on your site. You want visitors to stay on your site as long as possible reading other posts, looking through your information. The longer people stay on your site, the more likely they are to buy something.
What about Social Media Analytics and Insights
Each of the major social media networks offer analytics for business pages and accounts. On Twitter, you have to turn it on. On Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you need at least 100 likes/followers to start getting data. Most website platforms have a place to add the Google Analytics tracking code. Furthermore, there’s a free Google Analytics plugin for WordPress sites called Site Kit.
Oh, and don’t forget your email marketing reports!
If you send out a regular newsletter (at least monthly), you should track the open rate, the click-through rate and take a look at which links got clicked on the most. You also want to see how many people on your list are actually actively opening and reading your emails. You may want to segment the list somehow to get better results. If you’re sending out the same old emails, you’re probably not going to be very effective.
In conclusion, when you’re armed with this data, you can then plan for the next month. Check out my monthly “What’s Trending” article to take advantage of what will be trending on Twitter to gain exposure. Your strategic and tactical plans should be adjusted each month based on your analytics. Related Article: ROI or KPI?
I can take a look at your website’s SEO and page loading speed in a free 15-minute phone consult. I’ll also review your current digital marketing efforts. Click here to schedule.
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