Social media KPIs

There are a certain number of key performance indicators (KPIs) that allow online marketers to measure how effective their campaigns are. It’s far too easy to fall into the trap of thinking the number of followers is the only indicator — realistically, the real things to measure are a bit more difficult than "having more followers than them".

Note: To make this blog easier to read (and write), phrases used on Twitter, such as the words "followers" and "following" are going to be use, this way it can be more easily spread throughout multiple social networks without extending the post.

The number of "followers" myth

It's a myth that having a higher number of followers is a key performance indicator – it's possible to have 10,000 followers but have little or no return on investment from the time spent managing the social media account. What a company wants to see from their social media account is the following, in no particular order:

• Interaction
• Re-tweets
• Follower count
• Trends
• Referrals

From the list above, it's easy to see that the follower count is of little significance, below is a dissection of each different KPI.

Interaction

The most obvious KPI of a network is interaction. If people are visiting your page, sending @tweets and direct messages, it's a clear indicator that you're doing something right. Don't worry if what's happening is inconsistent, some tweets cause more of a stir than others.

For example, a controversial tweet is likely to give someone a reason to respond whether it's positive or negative, whereas a neutral tweet like "Just sitting in the pub" is less likely to cause ripples of emotion. Note: controversial tweets aren't really recommended by us, but current affairs are definitely a positive way of stimulating interaction.

Re-tweets

Whilst similar to the above, "re-tweets" are a different kettle of fish all together – people don't only like what you're saying, they like it enough to show all their followers how much they like it! In some ways, these are more valuable because they can spread like wildfire.

A re-tweet from somebody who is popular in the social networking arena is extremely valuable – as demonstrated in last weeks post on managing your social media profiles when Media Temple kindly commented and re-tweeted the post, causing a stream of new visitors, subscribers and followers.

One very important factor to remember here is that Twitter's API allows people to develop bots which can automatically re-tweet something which they're set to. For example, try mentioning "making a cup of tea" or "high five!" – both of these will generate an automated response from a robot.

Follower count

Despite what was written earlier in the post – the follower count is a significant KPI. A high number of followers does usually mean that the execution of a campaign is effective but sometimes it cannot because it is easily abused. A perfect example of this is mass-following (spamming). By following 1,000 people on Twitter it's likely that there will be interaction and there will be people following back but it's not recommended, it's far too easy to have an account marked as spam, particularly if the account is for a business.

It's probably much more representative to look at the followers to following ratio. The number of followers you have should always outweigh the number of people you are following – something which can easily happen through organic and genuine interaction.

Trends

These are something that suit a particular type of company and may not be suitable for all because they only usually affect things in the public's mind such as "X Factor" or "Justin Bieber" (much to the dismay of many) but are important nonetheless.

They are less easy to measure because they require a certain amount of research including searching twitter for the subject in question and jotting down the tones, interactions, re-tweets etc between everything.

Referrals

The most important KPI has been saved for last – referrals. These are what bring people to your website and will ultimately make you money. However, this is not skin deep and, as with everything, there is more to it.

People can be referred from your social network but it doesn't mean they're going to buy a product or comment on your blog, so it's suggested to use some real-time tracking software to monitor what people are doing as they do it, suggested software for this is Woopra. Whilst it’s a freemium product, it's very effective and has both OS X and Windows versions available for download to monitor referrals.

Conclusion

Whilst all of the above are great KPIs, remember that they should all be taken with a pinch of salt. It's not the volume that matters, but the value of each individual interaction, re-tweet, referral, trend or follower. It's better to have 100 valuable followers than 1000 people who don't care.

Written by Jason John Mills