As a magazine publisher, you’ll probably well aware of the importance of tracking metrics like page views and visits to your online publications. But how are you doing on your social media? Are you tracking the right, or any, metrics there?
Conde Nast’s new social media editor Stephanie Paige Miller has some great suggestions for what to track and why.
Miller points out that social media gives us real time insights into customer behavior that can be hugely valuable in our marketing decisions. She explains, “…social media creates a consumer narrative, telling you where users are coming from, what they’re doing and what they’re saying when they get there. This kind of qualitative data can fill gaps in your brand strategy.”
She recommends five metrics in particular that publishers need to pay attention to:
- Social Referral Activity – This can help you understand if your Facebook fans act differently from your Pinterest fans, or the different ways that Twitter and Tumblr followers interact with your brand.
- Follower Quality – Helps you understand how many of your fans are truly engaging with you, versus how many are there for a free sweepstakes or other one-time event. Higher quality followers, who are actively engaged in an on-going way, are generally more valuable than a high volume of less involved fans.
- Engagement – Tracking this metric helps you understand what copy is most engaging to your fan base, which can help advise your content calendar.
- Share of Voice – Get a handle on how your brand’s presence in social media boosts (or doesn’t) your authority in the social sphere.
- New and Returning Visitors – Look to these metrics to help understand the cyclical behavior of your readers, and whether you need to put more into retaining your existing visitors or building a new stream.
Sounds like a lot, I know. Fortunately, as Miller points out in her piece, there are some great tools available to help collect and understand these metrics. Once you know this information, you’ll be well armed to move your social strategy to the next level, and gain support and buy-in from your team, your management and your advertisers.