These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things (To Measure On Social Media)

Clicks on my links,

And engagement rates on posts.

Influencer scores,

And client boasts.

Robust Sprout Social reports,

Tied up in strings …

These are a few of my favorite things (to measure on social media)!

Nerd Alert: I’m actually listening to Julie Andrews sing her famous Sound of Music track as I write this.

Do you find yourself getting all bent out of shape with Facebook changes their algorithm?

Or when reading a post entitled, “101 SMM Things To Measure” — yikes!

I like to keep it pretty simple, you know, focus on a few of my favorite things.

It doesn’t mean there aren’t other things I’m looking at, but these are at the top of my list.

My Favorite Things To Measure On Social Media: Clicks

I’ve written a few posts on dark social media and the importance of click audits.

And sure, there’s something to be said about click-through-rates on emails and such, but I’m talking about social media clicks.

When you share a piece of content — a link — you know how many people commented, or shared, or favorited, but do you look at how many people clicked?

I think this is an often-missed metric when trying to evaluate your content.

Because whether that piece of content is something you created or something you curated (someone else’s content), clicks tell you how many people are interested in that type of content.

They help you move forward with your content marketing strategy (and it’s no secret that content marketing will be much harder in 2015 and coming years).

How To Measure Clicks

Let’s look at two of the “biggies” when measuring clicks: Facebook and Twitter.

On Facebook:

1. On your Facebook Page, go to Insights in the top menu
2. Once in Insights, go to Posts
3. Under ‘All Posts Published’ you can see about 15 past posts you’ve published
4. On the menu above the Posts grid, you’ll see a key; Post Clicks is a periwinkle color (some may beg that’s blue)
5. Under the Post column you can also click on a specific post and a report card will open up, there you’ll see “Post Clicks” under the highlighted grid

You can also export your data into an Excel sheet that will lay out all of your post metrics (just make sure you click “post level data”!), including clicks.

On Twitter:

1. When logged into Twitter, click on your Twitter profile picture
2. Click on “Twitter Ads”
3. This will sign you into your analytics and ad options for Twitter
4. On the top menu, choose “Analytics” and then “Tweet Activity”
5. Since they don’t have specifics on clicks for each tweet, check your righthand column for your link clicks for the last 28 days
6. And on Twitter MOBILE, you can click on any tweet you’ve sent and hit “VIEW ANALYTICS DETAILS”

Sprout Social 

I feel like it’s important for you to know that with Sprout Social, our social media analytics and monitoring platform, we can download all of this information into beautiful Excel sheets.

And yes, that means we get clicks on each and every tweet we put out there rather than an estimate.

Those robust Sprout Social reports, tied up in strings make us — and our clients — extremely satisfied.

My Favorite Things To Measure On Social Media: Engagement Rates

Yes, there are engagements such as:

• Likes
• Comments
• Shares
• Favorites
• Retweets
• CLICKS (see above!)

that we measure.

And with those handy, dandy, all wrapped up nice and neat with a bow Sprout Social reports, we have all of those at our fingertips in customizable data sheets.

But we like to take it a step further.

How We Measure Engagement

With our “Think Conversation, Not Campaign” approach, we like to know how WE’RE doing in the social sphere when it comes to engagement.

Enter Sprout Social Engagement Reports.

These tell us — and our clients — things like:

• Our Percentile Ranking: As Sprout defines it, “Get a sense of how you rank among the pack. Sprout Social calculates your percentile ranking by comparing your Response Rate and Response Time metrics for the selected period against the latest data that we have on profiles similar to yours.“
• Our Response Rate: Sprout uses estimated inbound links (think replies, retweets, shares, favorites, etc.) and divides that number by the number of our responses to those engagements.
• Our Average Response Time: (And this is a big one for us) How quickly are we responding to engagements, requests, or customer service needs?
• The report also breaks down your response rates by day of week and hour.

My Favorite Things To Measure On Social Media: Influencer Scores

I might catch some flack here, but yeah, I’m looking at your Klout score.

I view Klout scores not as a popularity contest, but as a score that tells me how well you’re able to MOVE CONTENT.

Looking at it that way, I can understand that with a higher score, you can possibly help me move MY CONTENT.

Before you get your undies in a wad, read Mark Schaefer’s post on Klout, why it matters, and how you should view it (he’s much more eloquent than I am).

I even have a browser extension so I can easily see Klout scores right from my Twitter stream.

How We Measure Influencer Scores

1. We take a general look at the scores of our followers from time-to-time (monthly)
2. We follow people/influencers in our niche with high Klout scores (The average Klout score is 40. Users with a score of 63 are in the top 5% of all users. We consider 65+ to be “high” or “influencer”)
3. We create Twitter lists with influencers and use those to formulate a strategy for influencer outreach

My Favorite Things To Measure On Social Media: Client Boasts

Also known as client testimonials, social proof, or peer-to-peer recommendations.

It would be too obvious to tell you how to go out and ask for testimonials.

That’s low-hanging fruit.

To be a little more in tune with social media, you need to know when your customers are mentioning you on their own!

How We Measure Client Boasts

We flat out use listening tools to tell us what’s going on. Here they are (in no particular order):

• Sprout Social (we use the Discovery and Smart Search tools)
• Socialmention
• Google Alerts
• Advanced search features on social sites
• Bit.ly

I’d like to note that NONE of the links in this post are affiliate links. Not even for Sprout, who we’ve mentioned like, 10 times. We just like to share awesome sauce stuff with everyone.

What Are Your Favorite Things To Measure On Social?

What we find valuable may not be what you find valuable. And that’s okay.

The important thing to think about is what matters most to YOU, your business goals, and your social media success.

Feel like sharing what your faves are? Let us know in the comment section below.

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Brooke B. Sellas

Brooke B. Sellas is the in-the-trenches Founder & CEO of @HelloBSquared, an award-winning social media, advertising, and social media customer care agency. She's also the author of Conversations That Connect -- a book all about social listening and social media customer care. Brooke's marketing mantra is “Think Conversation, Not Campaign” so be sure to give her a shout on the socials!

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