How to Measure the Success of Your Social Media Page

Tips for how Caribbean companies can gauge the success of their social media campaigns

Social Media has completely changed the way that companies advertise and measure their advertising success. Despite growing in popularity and relevance throughout the years, companies in the Caribbean are still figuring out what “success” means for them in the digital space.

The truth is there are various ways to measure the success of your social media campaigns however, it heavily depends on the goals of the company and its equally important, how the company measures those goals.

Here are tips on how Caribbean companies can track their success on social media:

1. What is the goal of your social media campaign?

In order to measure the success of a campaign on social media, the goal has to be clearly defined. Especially when looking at analytics and data. The data will be pointless to a viewer if there no established goal to help make sense of it all.

In this blog, we are going to focus on three of the more common social media goals companies set.

1. Awareness: brand awareness, product awareness etc.

2. Engagement: how many people engage with the content

3. Conversions: how many people actually purchased the product or service in the link provided.

2. How to Track Your Goals.

Each goal will have a different way to track its progress and ultimate success. This is especially true when it comes to the data they will look at and analyze. Many companies opt for analytic tools such as Sprout Social, Hootsuite Analytics, Google Analytics and more.

However, smaller to medium businesses that can’t afford those tools can monitor their page analytics and keep track of it on their own. Here is how they can do it.

- Set a time period to monitor these goals. This can be weekly, monthly or quarterly.

- Create an Excel sheet where the figures are listed to keep track of it over a longer period of time.

- Decide on the statistics that are relevant to your goals and then list them and compare them.

That last one is the tricky part. Page Analytics can be intimidating. However, it is important to first figure out which data is important to your goals and then organize them on an excel sheet or document. Looking at the three examples we are working with, here are some stats that are important to note:

1. Awareness:

- Reach (both organic & paid) - how many unique accounts a post reached.

- Shares - how many people shared a post or the page.

- Mentions - how many accounts mentioned the company on a post or story.

- Impressions - how many times a post showed up on someone’s timeline.

2. Engagement

- Comments - on posts and stories.

- Replies - to posts and stories.

- Likes - both page and posts likes.

- Shares - both post and page shares.

- Audience growth - how many new accounts followed a page over a specific period of time.

How to track it?

Many of these figures will be available on Instagram and Facebook Analytics. Specifically, on Facebook’s “Insights” page, it shows this information over a selected time period and it also has these figures broken down by post. Companies can then take this information and list them in a separate document to keep track of it weekly or monthly. They can assess the data and interpret the information for the next steps they should take for beneficial online outcomes.

3. Conversions

Conversions are a bit more tricky to track as opposed to other goals however, it is one of the best ways to measure social media success in relation to an increase in sales. Here is what is important to track:

Conversion Rate: this shows how many visitors who clicked on the link from a social media post actually signed up for a newsletter, bought the product etc.

How to track it?

- Companies can use URL shortener/trackable links using websites like bit.ly.

- Companies can place cookies in users' machines.

- Check the Facebook and Instagram statistics on link “clicks”

- Companies can determine their conversion rate by using this formula:

Conversion x 100

Total Clicks

Click-Through Rate: is defined by Google as the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown.

How to track it?

It is best to track this using this formula: clicks ÷ impressions. (these figures can be obtained through Facebook/Instagram/Google Analytics)

Bounce Back Rate: the percentage of people who clicked a link but immediately left the web page.

How to track it?

The best way to track this is using Google Analytics. In the Google Analytics back end companies can find these statistics by looking at the Acquisition tab > All Traffic > Channels > Bounce Rate button.

3. Use these statistics and adjust accordingly

This data won’t be useful if companies don’t use it to guide them and their marketing decisions. Once you have the numbers in front of you and organized, it is then easier to spot trends, what posts are or are not working and if the goals determined are being achieved.

For example, some companies may realise that video content performs better for them and decide to invest more in video content. Or a company may realize that how-to videos with their products/services work better than generic product posts. Either way over time companies will begin to notice trends in their analytics and can determine what works best for them.

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Need to boost your company’s branding and overall marketing goals? Connective Pros can help! Contact us via our website or send us an email at info@connectivepros.com to get a consultancy for your business.