For companies or influencers that are not “pay to play”, you can still grow a following by monitoring these metrics:
Are you like me where you make a post on social media and then 10 minutes later see how many people like it. Check out the likes again in 1 hour to see if they grew and respond to comments. By the end of the day, you take one last looks at total interactions and check out if your follower count grew… and then never look at that post again. If this is you, than you and I are doing it wrong and it is time to change. Brands are making this same mistake too of running a social media analysis on a topic once and then call it good. Online is always in a state of flux, so there is an ongoing relationship with the data. More simply, that means we need to keep checking our data and go beyond the usual monitoring of retweets or ‘likes’ to develop an in-depth idea of our follower. Let’s find out what type of posts they like best, what the community is saying about us and our competitors, and maximize who is being drawn in to your personal website. (If you don’t have one, skip to the end to see why you NEED it).
Daily Reports for Yourself
Don’t be a billboard, remember to engage! Likes, comments and shares do not stop after just one day. If someone comments on your post within a few seconds of your post going live, or a few days later, the importance of engaging back remains the same. You should strive to jump into the conversations surrounding your brand because you can connect further with your audience AND you can better control how you’re perceived.
However, if a post is not engaging with your followers, this is a learning opportunity to try something different. High engagement comes from high reach, so let’s analyze it. For example, I made a post about the summer heat making me want to get dressed in just my bathing suit for the day (I mean, it was feeling like 105 degrees!!!) When posted on IG reels, it had only 600 views. So, I tried it in my grid where it reached over 2000 and had over 500 interactions. I placed it in stories and reached 600 people. For me, my stride with followers is in the grid, but everyone is different and what works today, may not work tomorrow. Keep analyzing engagement to understand your audience better.
Weekly Reports for Immediate Supervisor
Post engagement rate tells a company how interesting their content is. If a company is paying money to have a social media manager, this can indicate the right person is on the job. It could also indicate an employee is stretched too thin and cannot get to everything (I mean, there are like 5 or more platforms to manage, plus have creative time to make the post and analyze data coming in). Maybe this number could be higher if comments were replied to, indicating more staff needs to be added to the team.
Brand awareness and share of voice are like overhearing someone’s conversation, except it is written for the whole world to see. Awareness comes from impressions divided by reach. This tells you if people are noticing you. It is like you are sitting at a bar, how many people’s attention have you grabbed and they are intrigued by what you might say or do next. The more people that look at you and notice you, the bigger your company can grow. In the same scenario, now imagine you are at the bar and people are whispering about you. Maybe it is that you are so rude because you cut 10 other people in line to use the restroom. Or in the business world, your company is so rude they wouldn’t return a purchase because their return policy ended one day earlier. You have to know how people feel about your company, so you know what you are doing better than your competitors and where your competitor is beating you.
Monthly Report for Company’s Management Team
Interactions per platform are a great way for the whole business to see how it is growing. If you are doing amazing on 3 platforms, focus your time on nurturing that following and drop the other platforms. You don’t need to be everywhere and this can help others see why. Not every social media platform is a good fit for every business, so you should invest your time and skills in the platforms where you’re most likely to reach and engage with your target audience. Besides knowing what platform to be on, also note the interactions per 1000 followers and follower growth.
Social media platforms can disappear over time or go out of style. That’s why it is important that there is a company or person website. Somewhere that your followers can go to see everything that is posted on different platforms and a way for you to store all your creative work. You have complete ownership over it. There are no terms and conditions you need to follow. If Twitter and Facebook can ban Donald Trump, they can do it to your company as well. So make sure your social media accounts lead people to your website. These Referrals are a must for long term security, more people become aware of your website and could check it without social media drawing them in.
It is much harder to grow without ads. If you don’t have the cash to do so yet, analyze your engagement, reach, brand awareness, share of voice, interactions per platform and referrals to your own website to get the most out of your social media efforts.
