3 things to start tracking on Facebook and Twitter

Feeling lost in the sea of impressions, organic reach vs. paid reach, likes, favorites, etc. that make up social media? Likeable Local’s Nicole Kroese throws you a line.

Michelle Graff michelle.graff@nationaljeweler.com

Nicole Kroese is the vice president of marketing and partnerships at Likeable Local, a social media marketing platform and app for small and mid-sized businesses. She can be reached at nicole@likeablelocal.com or @NicoleKroese on Twitter.

By now, you’re likely already convinced that social media is an important part of your jewelry business or brand’s marketing strategy; otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this. What you may be less confident about is exactly what role all this posting on Facebook and Twitter plays in your greater marketing plan and, more importantly, how you can track it in a meaningful way that will lead to selling more jewelry and growing your business.

Facebook and Twitter’s analytics seem to be getting more extensive every day. Just by clicking on “Insights” or “Analytics” you can instantly find out an incredible amount about your fans and followers, each post or tweet you’ve shared and the general health of your social presence. But, with all the graphs, numbers, percentages and exportable data available it’s so easy to get lost in the sea of impressions, organic reach vs. paid reach, demographics, likes, favorites and more.

Essentially, it’s easy to look at the data and feel like you have no clue what it all means and how these posts are furthering your marketing goals.

You’re not alone. What metrics should you really be tracking and analyzing when it comes to Facebook and Twitter? What kind of conclusions should you be looking to draw? And how can what you learn from your social metrics optimize the rest of your marketing strategy?

The trick: It’s all about how you slice it.

In this article, you’ll learn three essential metrics that you should definitely be tracking and how, if you do, you’ll have a clear-as-day picture of how your efforts on Facebook and Twitter are making an impact.

1) Link click-throughs (vs. post engagement)
Before you start drawing conclusions about your most successful posts, you must decide what your goal is on a per-post basis. Hint: It will not always be the same. Let’s start with an example. Take a look at the two posts from the Facebook Page of our company, Likeable Local, this one from July 17 and the one below from July 7.

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

At first glance, which one looks more successful?

The beach one, right? Look on the surface and you’ll see one post with 100-plus likes and one with four, but dig deeper into Facebook analytics on a per-post basis and discover that the social listening blog post actually got 29 click-throughs. Suddenly, that post isn’t looking so bad.

What

Banner will be right here …

it all boils down to is what the goal of the post was. For the beach post, we wanted to entertain and engage our fans and make them smile. We didn’t need them to click through to anything; a “like” was great outcome. For the listening post, we wanted them to click though to the blog post we wrote. Liking it is a nice byproduct, but ultimately a click-through was the goal.

For jewelers, this might look like a post asking their opinion on a jewelry trend, versus a post linking to a piece they could buy on your website.

Don’t judge the success of each post by the same standard. Decide if your goal is on-page engagement or a click through of a link. Deciding this before you even share the post is essential so you can manage expectations. With a goal of engagement you can correlate these efforts with your goals of connecting with customers and prospects, making your business or brand more personable and promoting loyalty. With a goal of clicks-throughs from a link, you’re contributing to your website or blog traffic and conversion goals. Both are very important and very different. Don’t confuse them.

The main point: Don’t use one success metric overall to determine your best posts on Facebook and Twitter. Determine the one goal (such as click-throughs, or likes) on a per-post basis and optimize for it.

2) “Clickbait” patterns
Now, let’s talk about if your goal is clicks on links you share, specifically. Social media is an awesome vehicle to drive people to your website, landing/registration pages, and blogs. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could understand why some posts yield lots of clicks from your audience while others don’t? You can.

To learn about what makes people click, you want look at all of your posts--even the ones where a click was not your goal. A click is a click (even if it’s to a picture), and when your fans and followers choose to click something it means it was compelling to them. You can learn from this.

The “summer” photo above, got 45 clicks in addition to the 100-plus likes, even though our goal was not necessarily clicks. What does that say? That image and text were compelling. An analysis in Likeable Local’s most clicked-through posts on Facebook pointed to a pattern where specific language and images on Facebook were best at driving clicks. From just looking at on-page engagement we would not have learned this.

The moral of the story: If you’re looking to drive clicks-throughs to your website, blog or any destination, take a deep dive into patterns in your posts that drive click-throughs to your website. Track what you’ve learned about the best “clickbait” for your audience each month, and start implementing it into future posts.

3) “Social test” results
Have you ever thought about using social media as a testing ground for marketing and/or company-wide initiatives? You should. Social media is an amazing place to test subject lines, headlines, new products and more before you fully launch them so you can better optimize every initiative. Although this may not seem like it leads to direct social ROI, the benefit to your overall marketing strategy is huge.

Think about this: You’re wondering what tagline folks will prefer for your upcoming Valentine’s Day sale. Test them on Facebook or Twitter to see which one is better clickbait or engagement-bait. What about a subject line for a huge email blast? You can test that too.

Or, want to make sure the image on your landing page next to the “buy now” button is compelling? Test it with your social audience before linking to it in an email newsletter.

There are hundreds of scenarios where a social test will save you lots of time and money in the future by optimizing everything you do for best possible click and engagement-bait.

Start tracking these three things, and begin understanding direct impact your social efforts are having on your greater marketing goal, and get closer to reaching them. If you’re looking for even more tips on creating compelling social content, check out this free e-book just for jewelers, The 10 Commandments of Content Creation, Jewelers Edition.

I’d love to hear what you think of these tracking tips.

Nicole Kroese is the vice president of marketing and partnerships at Likeable Local, a social media marketing platform and app for small and mid-sized businesses. She is a frequent guest speaker at events such as The New York Business Expo, Social Media Today Live Webinar Series and the Small Business Digital Marketing Summit. Reach her at nicole@likeablelocal.com, @NicoleKroese on Twitter, or on LinkedIn.