Social Media Optimization For Dummies

Chapter 19

Tracking Progress and Measuring Success

In This Chapter

• Defining key metrics for success
• Using Facebook Insights to go behind the scenes of posts
• Exploring Twitter Analytics to keep your tweets on track

This chapter takes you through the key metrics to keep in mind when measuring your social media optimization (SMO) progress. You dig into the nitty-gritty of Facebook Insights, and find out how to harness that information and turn it into a successful Facebook Page. Finally, you delve into Twitter Analytics to see what these numbers are telling you and how to tweak your SMO approach in response to these numbers.

Identifying the Key Metrics

It is important to be able to measure the success of your SMO efforts because doing so will give you a clearer picture of your return on investment (ROI). After all, who wants to spend any more time and money than they have to on a failing SMO plan? The following sections discuss what we feel are the five most important metrics to keep a watchful eye on to know whether your social media efforts are successful.

Reach

In terms of your social media content, reach is the number of unique people who saw your post. By unique, we mean that when someone reads a portion of your post, clicks away from it, and returns at a later time, the view is counted as one visit rather than two separate views. That's why the reach of your posts often is a lower number than your page or site views.

Reach is affected by all the rest of the metrics in the ...