How is the analysis of the effectiveness of SMM promotion, analytics. Determining the effectiveness of SMM

The wider the audience of social networks, the higher the potential reach of your message. But what to count? Regarding the brand / company page: number of posts, subscribed / unsubscribed, engagement per week / month, total reach, viral reach, paid reach, total impressions, check-ins, page mentions, sources of user activity, number of post impressions, demographics, EdgeRank. Regarding the brand / company message: Likes, Comments, Shares, Overall Reach, Viral Reach, Paid Reach, Positive / Negative Reviews, Sources of User Action, Link Clicks, Purchases.

Subscribers - the audience of the company on the social network. The main indicators for subscribers: the number of subscribers, the number of new subscribers for the period, the average daily / weekly / monthly number of unique visitors, the number of audience responses.

You can consider user activity by separate indicators - the number of social actions.

Social action, as a rule, means any user action within the brand / company communities. This indicator gives an understanding of how much people are interested in communicating with the company, how involved they are in campaigns held in the community.

"Like" marks. Such actions of users give an idea of ​​how interesting they are in the materials published in the community.

Number of comments. On Facebook, most of the comments are left on the microblog entries. On VKontakte, most of the activity is carried out in discussions, photo albums, microblogging and in the section "Videos".

Transactional comments. This is a special type of comment when the user declares either the intention to make the target transaction, or the fact that it has been committed.

Participation in promotions and contests. This indicator also indicates the involvement of people in active actions carried out within the group.

Uploaded content. If users themselves begin to generate content in the community (upload photos and videos, create new discussion topics), this indicates maximum audience loyalty, especially when it comes to brand-related content.

Resonance. This is an indicator of how often content (posts, photos and videos) is republished by users. An important task of SMM is to initiate the viral dissemination of information, stimulate constant publications, thereby reaching an increasing audience.

Brand information background. This category of metrics takes into account the data obtained during the monitoring of social networks, in particular, the number of mentions of the company and products, as well as the ratio of positive, negative and neutral statements.

For these indicators, special markers must be established, the achievement of which will indicate the appearance of a problem. So, if the number of mentions of a brand for a certain period falls by more than 20%, then this may mean a decrease in interest in the brand, which in the long term can lead to a drop in sales.

Another example of a marker: the number of negative brand mentions exceeds a certain level. On average, an acceptable level of negativity is 15-25% of the total number of mentions.

The amount of traffic to the external site. This metric is relevant if, within the framework of the campaign, it is fundamentally important to transfer the user to an external site (for example, to an online store, to a corporate site, or to a selling page).

The correct approach is to calculate both the total volume of traffic from social networks and for each event held separately. As a rule, for the most accurate calculation through the statistics system (Google Analytics, Yandex. Metrika, etc.), URL identifiers are created that are unique for each of the activities. Then, for each one, clicks are counted (and further actions on the site).

Traffic quality. Of course, not only the quantity but also the quality of the visitors is important. There are three main metrics used to get an idea of ​​it:

· The average time spent by users on the site;

· The average number of pages viewed by users;

Bounce rate (percentage of visitors who left the group after viewing the content of the page / wall)

The number of targeted actions taken by visitors. As a rule, the traffic itself is not the goal of the campaign (with the exception of online projects focused on its growth to sell advertising), it is much more important whether users take those actions that will either directly solve the problem (for example, purchase, like, comment , participation), or bring this solution closer (request for consultation with a specialist). Such actions are called targeted.

Thus, each of the indicators is important separately, but some of them can be combined to subtract the coefficient. So, Socialbakers, a company that is the most popular provider of analytical tools for social media, statistics and metrics, offers to calculate the level of subscriber engagement using the formula:

All positions are taken in one day.

In addition to independent analytics, you can turn to specialized services.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS http://www.google.com/analytics/

Google Analytics allows you to analyze sales and conversions, as well as provides up-to-date data on the actions of users on the site, how they went to it, and helps to understand how to attract them again.

SEESMIC https://seesmic.com

Seesmic is a free popular social media monitoring service. Supports monitoring of such sites: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Chatter, GoogleBuzz, Ping.fm. There are applications for both web and desktop, iPhone, Android, WindowsMobile. Seesmic is essentially a twitter client that is written using the Adobe Air library, which makes this application cross-platform. Outwardly, this client is similar to TwitterDeck and has all its advantages.

SOCIALBACKERS http://www.socialbakers.com

Socialbakers is a large-scale statistical service calling itself "The Heart of Facebook Statistics". In addition to Facebook, Socialbakers provides free of charge the opportunity to monitor information on various items in twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, news, etc. Socialbakers is known for its brand ratings on Facebook, in different categories.

YOUSCAN http://www.youscan.ru

Youscan is a large-scale Russian service for monitoring mentions. Analyzes social networks, knows how to highlight the negative.

IQBUZZ http://www.iqbuzz.ru

IQBuzz is a social media monitoring service. IQBuzz monitors a large number of sources and platforms, such as LiveInternet, LiveJournal, Twitter, Yandex. Blogs, video hosting services RuTube and YouTube, various news, entertainment, specialized, thematic and regional portals. One of the key advantages of the service is the ability to connect new sources and Internet resources for monitoring at the request of users.

NIPPLE SYSTEM http://nippelapp.ru

The Nipple system - allows you to analyze the statistics of various communities on VKontakte, without gaining access to the internal statistics of the social network. Using simple technologies, the service checks any group and its members for various parameters related to the profiles of the members and the level of interaction in the group. The goal is to identify the number of low-quality users in brand groups on the VKontakte social network.

HOOTSUITE http://hootsuite.com

Hootsuite is a multifunctional social media service. The emphasis in this service is made on working with twitter "om and, first of all, Hootsuite is useful for those who have several accounts at once. Hootsuite also successfully works with Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Foursquare accounts, with blogs on WordPress; connects to Ping.fm, which allows you to update the pages of more than 40 social networks.

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Today it is almost impossible to find a person who is not registered in one or more social networks. That is why SMM promotion is becoming a full-fledged marketing method. The effectiveness of advertising on social networks cannot be ignored, losing the opportunity to use this tool, because it is on Odnoklassniki, Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, etc. is a significant part of the target audience of your business.

Why it is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising on social networks

Planning the marketing activities of a company is impossible without the direct involvement of the management, which determines the course of business development. When developing a strategy, market indicators are taken into account, on the basis of which it is possible to build a forecast of the dynamics of consumer preferences. They can be conventionally called indicators. Data for evaluation can be obtained, including in social networks, in which advertising of your brand or product helps to see changes in the characteristics of the target audience (demographics, age, location, preferences, interests, etc.).

Each of these indicators is able to answer important questions for the marketing strategy and business as a whole:

Metrics such as budget, resources, deadlines, products, and processes can be quantitative or qualitative in terms of how social media users interact with your brand. In addition, they can be optimized and adjusted to improve the effectiveness of social media ads. In the long term, improved performance could lead to a more profitable allocation of social media investment.

Latest Research on Social Media Advertising Effectiveness

The Content Marketing Institute teamed up with MarketingProfs to organize a survey, which was attended by 3,714 marketers from around the world. Content was chosen as the research topic, as well as Internet marketing success. Despite the fact that only 263 respondents are B2C marketers and business owners, the survey results were considered indicative.

Sponsored posts (for example, posts on Facebook or Twitter and Pinterest) are used by 76% of B2C marketers. 61% of them confirmed the effectiveness of this type of advertising on social networks, the effectiveness of which was rated at 4 or 5 points on a five-point scale (3 demonstrates a neutral attitude).

Advertising on social networks itself received an assessment of 4 or 5 points on a scale of effectiveness among 59% of respondents (this method of promotion is used by 74% of all respondents). Facebook was recognized as the most successful platform for promotion, followed by Youtube.

Effectiveness of social platforms for B2C:

Most of the respondents who took part in the CMI survey belong to the B2B sphere (1521 people). Of these, 93% use advertising on social networks: 52% - advertising posts, 41% - direct advertising. 48% of marketers rated these tactics 4 points on a 5-point scale of effectiveness, 45% - 5 points.

However, 55% of B2B professionals rated above average (4 or 5) paid search ads, as well as PPC (Pay-Per-Click). And only 29% of respondents consider traditional banner advertising to be efficient enough or super effective.

Effectiveness of social platforms for B2B:

What are the indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of advertising on social networks?

Users of social networks are in part attracted by metrics that allow you to see how many subscribers your community or channel has, how many comments, likes and reposts your content has. Business owners should also pay attention to these indicators in order to measure them and evaluate the opening advertising effectiveness for the company.

Audience

Entrepreneurs expect their target audience to be aware of their brand and the services they offer. This awareness can be measured using the following criteria:

1. The number of subscribers, that is, those people who are in your community on the social network and regularly receive newsletters about content updates.
2. Audience growth dynamics showing an increase or decrease in the number of subscribers over a certain period of time.

Awareness represents the top of the sales funnel. Here are such incentives of customers as the urge to realize the need, the desire to satisfy their needs and loyalty to the company.

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Coverage

The reach indicator reflects how many users from the total audience of the social network have viewed your content, including paid advertising. This indicator can be applied both to an individual post and to the entire page. With its help, you can evaluate the effectiveness of advertising impact on the target audience.

Involvement

There are 4 main ways of interacting with the audience using social networks. They measure the reaction of the audience.

1. Likes, with which you can see the number of users who have viewed and rated your content.
2. Comments that demonstrate the effectiveness of your content in encouraging users to engage in dialogue.
3. Reposts reflecting the increased interest of the audience, who considered your content relevant for placement on their pages, as well as for further distribution.
4. Mentions showing how many times your brand name is quoted during user interactions.

The more active the audience is, the higher the effectiveness of advertising in social networks. The engagement indicator helps you gauge the degree to which users are interested in your content. Thanks to this, the loyalty of the audience grows, which in the future can lead to an increase in sales.

Social mood

This indicator is one of the most revealing. By researching social mood, you get the opportunity to gauge the attitude of users towards your company and find out what is being said about your brand.

The difficulty lies in the fact that in the process of communication, social media users can mention your brand without directly addressing it. To understand in what context the audience is talking about your company - in a positive or negative way, specialized services are involved, which are used by marketers to evaluate. Sentiment analysis of reviews is carried out based on the specified key parameters. The higher the percentage of mentions of your brand on social media, the higher the effectiveness of your social media ads. In addition, by measuring social mood, you get the opportunity to quickly respond to criticism and adjust your strategy to avoid the appearance of negativity in the future.

With the help of specialized services (for example, ReviewPro), the social mood of your audience can be expressed in numbers that are easy to use when assessing the effectiveness of advertising on social networks.

Share of advertising exposure (SOV - Share of Voice)

Measuring this indicator can help:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of advertising on a social network, that is, provide answers to the following questions:
• Clarify the degree of recognition of your company (whether customers mention your brand on their own during communication, or only after relevant advertising or promotions).
• Supplement the analysis of competitive activity:

Attraction of clients

In the matter of achieving the set business goals, activities in social networks simply cannot be based only on communications with users. The goal of social media marketing is to generate demand for services, generate leads, and drive sales.

Based on these goals, you should create your own sales funnel and create a channel for generating profit from promoting your brand on social media. Many social media platforms offer the user the ability to generate a standard traffic report. However, for a full analysis, it is better to involve specialized services, for example, Google Analytics, which helps to assess the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, which contributed to the transition of potential customers from your page on the social network to the corporate website. By using UTM links in posts, Google Analitycs helps you find a traffic channel and assess whether it led to lead generation and deal completion.

How to Assess Social Media Advertising Effectiveness: Key Steps

Step 1. Define your social media marketing funnel

This process consists of several stages:

1. Acquaintance.

The tasks of this stage include grabbing the attention of users and stimulating their interest in your brand.

1. Involvement.

You can engage users with the help of entertaining or educational content, thanks to which the interested audience participates in the discussion, leaving comments, and disseminates it through reposts.

1. Conversion.

Now it's time to convert interested users into future buyers by offering them to buy an attractive product, fill out a form, or sign up for a newsletter.

1. Involvement.

One of the great features of social networks is that users who enter the sales funnel engage other people there with their activity. Therefore, the number of your potential customers is constantly growing, and each of them leads people from your circle of friends and relatives to your sales funnel.

Step 2. Determine social media attribution for business

Social media attribution- the process of identifying revenue channels, campaigns and publications. In this case, Google Analytics will come to your aid. However, not all attribution models offered by this service are suitable for social media.

If we assume that the first acquaintance with your brand happened while watching a video on Facebook, then the following user steps look like this:

• After visiting your brand page, the user subscribes to it in order to receive regular news.
• After a couple of days, your page is replenished with an article, which can be read in full only on your site, where the link placed in the post leads.
• The user goes to your site and subscribes to the newsletter to keep abreast of new products and current events.
• A week later, the user's e-mail receives a letter with a code, by entering it on your website, he receives a discount on the product that attracted his attention on the page on the social network.

Google Analytics offers last-click attribution, but it doesn't take into account social media impact. In this case, multi-touch attribution is more effective, with the help of which you can track all of the user's channels that led to a purchase.

Stage 3. Counting CPA in social networks

CPA (cost per acquisition) is an advertising model in which the advertiser pays only for certain user actions: clicks, subscriptions, purchases, registrations.

When you run a Twitter campaign and use it to grow your followers, you can see how many people from that audience have become customers (which is an acquisition). If you know the investment spent on publishing, you can calculate the acquisition cost by dividing the price of the posted post by the number of users who eventually clicked on your link and subscribed.

Stage 4. Calculating the ROI of social networks

ROI = (income minus investments) * 100 / investments

Social media revenue is calculated using the attribution model. If we assume that the income from one conversion action is equal to $ 120, of which 30% belongs to social networks (this was suggested by the attribution model), then the ROI will be equal to $ 40. Of course, this indicator is not always accurate, but it gives an idea of ​​the level of costs.

Social media is an important source of lead generation for businesses, especially B2B. If you follow the above algorithm, you can use it to assess the effectiveness of social networks for the chosen marketing strategy, as well as adjust your actions under this policy in order to stimulate profit growth.

How to determine the effectiveness of social media ads depending on the type of project

1. Stores (services) whose activities are carried out only on social networks.

For such sites, the effectiveness of advertising on social networks is calculated very simply, since all sales are carried out only here. Profit is made up of the cost of all goods sold, and the amount of costs is determined by the cost of production, increased by the amount of investment in promotion in social networks. In this case, the ROI indicator is calculated using the following formula:

D- income from the sale of goods;

З1- the total cost of goods;

1. Public pages and groups, the profit of which is based on the publication of paid guest posts, links to affiliate programs, etc.

For these platforms, the effectiveness of advertising in social networks is also easily calculated using the formula for the ratio of profit to total costs, which is presented above. In this case, the revenue side is the total cost of all paid posts for the period under consideration (month, quarter, etc.). The cost part includes the cost of man-hours for the reporting period, as well as the amount of investment in the promotion of the group.

1. Stores (services) and companies selling services for which social networks are one of the promotion channels in the general sales funnel.

It is rather difficult for these platforms to assess the effectiveness of advertising in social networks, since it is difficult to find the weight of a separate promotion channel in the overall complex of marketing activities. Therefore, first you need to find the right approach that will help simplify the task of calculating the ROI of social networks.

Types of ads that show the most effective social media ads

• Branding.

Brand awareness is the key to its winning position against competitors. With the help of social media, you can reach a huge target audience that exceeds the number of viewers of TV ads. Don't ignore the effectiveness of social media as a brand awareness tool.

• Hidden marketing.

Pop-up banners and other annoying advertisements have long taught social media users to close such pages without even familiarizing themselves with their content. In this regard, the need arose for such advertising on social networks, the effectiveness of which is expressed in the hidden manipulation of the attention of visitors.

This approach takes patience. To begin with, you need to gather a loyal audience around your brand, and then start promoting, which is free from the intrusiveness of conventional advertising, but at the same time pursues the same goals. Most firms for which social media is one of the main promotion channels emphasize the effectiveness of advertising on social networks.

• Viral Marketing.

High-quality viral marketing can take a lot more effort and skill. It is very difficult to generate viral content and achieve its rapid distribution, but the effectiveness of such promotion on social networks is really great. In this case, content that is humorous or stimulating the user to show curiosity will be a great help, which will help to increase brand awareness.

• Black PR.

Black methods are quite unpredictable, because in the end the "dirt" may end up on a company that has sought to denigrate competitors. In this case, one should act more skillfully and delicately, without stopping to the level of spreading gossip and inaccurate information, in order to push the user to the idea that the reputation of competitors is much more modest against the background of the brand in question.

All your actions within the framework of applying the black PR methodology should not leave "tails" so that competitors do not have the opportunity to prove your involvement in what is happening or make claims.

How to improve the effectiveness of social media ads

1. Use the social potential of your employees.

About 89% of brand advertisers use free social media marketing tools to generate their own ad campaigns. 71% of agencies whose clients place an order for business promotion also use them. At the same time, 81% of agencies implement marketing campaigns for their customers using paid social media tools. They are also used by 75% of companies promoting their brand on their own.

From this we can conclude that most brands prefer to attract their own resources and free social media tools to promote and generate content, as well as to interact with the target audience. However, third-party agencies are most often used to create and publish paid classifieds.

If the experience and qualifications of your employees can be effectively involved in promoting your brand on social media, you have an opportunity to save money. In addition, communication with users will be more personalized.

1. Publish social media ads for your target audience.

The results of marketing research confirm that a significant portion of advertisers are convinced of the need to increase their ad spend on social media. The effectiveness of this approach is beyond doubt. However, 40% of those surveyed plan to increase the budget by only 10% or even less. This means that brands are aware of the high performance of Sponsored Ads on social media, but they are not ready to make significant investments in this promotion channel.

If your budget is tight, little things should be considered. To increase the effectiveness of advertising on social networks with minimal financial costs, carefully choose the time and place for publications, and for this you need to know everything about the features of social networks that your target audience prefers.

1. Use social media to increase your audience reach.

Television and other types of advertising are gradually losing their positions. The effectiveness of advertising on social networks is recognized by the majority of advertisers, 40% of whom increase their investments in this type of promotion. It is social media that is recognized as the very phenomenon of our time, which unites various channels for the dissemination of information. If we turn to the results of marketing research, we find interesting facts:

• Over 50% of advertisers promote their brand through offline advertising and sponsored ads on social media. This is due to the fact that at equal costs of creating advertising, the cost of posting on social media is lower.
• More than 25% of advertisers are reallocating their marketing budget in favor of social media advertising.
• About 75% of brands conduct marketing campaigns both on the pages of their own corporate website and in online communities.

With the help of advertising on social networks, you can significantly increase the reach of your target audience, since these sites provide a wide range of paid and free tools. The easiest way to attract users is to promote your community through ads while posting interesting content.

1. Define the goals and objectives of your social media advertising campaign.

To stimulate the growth of sales on social networks, you first need to purchase ads on these sites, with which you will attract the target audience and engage them in interaction. Placing a paid ad on online communities does not generate an immediate increase in sales revenue. However, it is quite possible to turn every subscriber of your community into a buyer. The main thing is to give him something that can interest him, that is, a product with which you can evaluate the effectiveness of advertising on social networks.

1. Create a relevant landing page for your social media users on your website.

More than half of advertisers believe that the same criteria can be used to measure the performance of paid ads in online communities and offline ads, for example, sales growth, increased brand awareness, and free posting about the company. However, placing ads using paid tools on social networks does not always guarantee an increase in sales of your product. Only 10% of ad sellers in online communities commit to achieving this result. In addition, other criteria are used to assess the effectiveness of advertising on social networks, which are used by almost half of the sellers.

To get the most reliable results, you need to analyze the performance yourself. To do this, you can create a landing page on the corporate website for users who click on the advertising links of social networks. Keep track of the number of visitors who completed the steps required to launch the sales process.

However, not all visitors are ready to close the deal right after the first visit. This is why your landing page should have engaging content that will help the user continue to get to know your business. For example, you can offer potential customers a discount for registering on the site.

1. Measure the effectiveness of social media ads.

However, almost a third of advertisers question the ability to measure the effectiveness of paid ad placement in online communities. To obtain data, it is enough to select the appropriate metrics that will be most effective for evaluating your campaign. For example, you can measure the bottom line using the number of followers attracted by a marketing campaign or the number of mentions of your brand in online communities. Such indicators will be useful for analyzing the effectiveness of advertising on social networks.

1. Use social media ads to both inform customers about your brand and to support sales.

After launching a social media campaign, almost 50% of advertisers expect increased sales and brand awareness. You need to gradually involve users in the conversion process, attracting their attention even during the first visit to your page on social networks.

Advertising in online communities gives brands the opportunity to engage with audiences and inform potential customers about the product and what's new. However, social media promotion can also act as a sales support tool. The main thing is to choose the appropriate methods and evaluation criteria.

All metrics in Social Media Marketing can be divided into two broad groups: base metrics (these are the well-known likes, reposts, views, comments and subscribers) and their derivatives. The role of the latter is extremely important, as they help to assess the dynamics of changes in quantitative characteristics that determine the popularity of the community, and therefore to understand how effective certain marketing activities and work with the community have been. In this article, we will try to consider all the most commonly used KPIs, for convenience, we will divide the material into several thematic sections.

Evaluating the effectiveness of SMM in terms of attracting target audience

The global goal of a marketing campaign is to attract as many potential customers as possible. Therefore, to begin with, let's consider the indicators reflecting the dynamics of the growth of the subscription base.

Number of subscribers

The most obvious KPI in SMM used by professionals of any level. However, for its reliable determination, it is necessary to separate the grain from the chaff, that is, the bots from real people. It is important to do this for the simple reason that the presence of such subscribers negatively affects other performance indicators and complicates the calculations, since they do not repost, do not like and do not participate in discussions. Please note that fake accounts can subscribe to you even if you have never resorted to cheating: this is how spammers act, trying to publish a link to their resource in the comments at every convenient opportunity. It is quite easy to identify a fake based on the following criteria:

● Absence of original photos - photos of celebrities or neutral pictures are used as an avatar and filling of a photo album;
● Personal data is not specified - profession, place of study and work, presence of relatives, etc. A living person will at least outline a circle of interests;
● The use of a nickname instead of a real name - historically, the regulars of social networks add nicknames to their real names, but do not hide their real names;
● Spam wall - replete with re-posts, often unrelated to each other, and the original entries are openly advertising in nature;
● The number of friends is measured in thousands - this is typical for public figures, but not for ordinary users.

Only after weeding out the fakes (manually or using automated applications), you can proceed to further calculations.

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Number of unsubscriptions

This metric helps to understand how effective the posted content is in terms of SMM, as well as the work of the community manager with the target audience. Unfortunately, not every social network allows you to measure the number of unsubscribed users. For example, if the “Unfollows” item is present in the built-in Facebook statistics, then on VKontakte you will have to use a special web application “Deserter”. On Instagram, you won't be able to reliably measure this indicator at all, since the site administrators have disabled the API for third-party software.

Audience growth dynamics

Calculated by the formula:

(net gain / total subscribers) * 100%

Here, net growth is the difference between the number of new subscribers and the number of people who left the community over a certain period of time. Allows you to evaluate the relevance of the published content and the effectiveness of targeted advertising, if any.

Number of views

Comments are superfluous. For all its simplicity, this is one of the least accurate metrics, as social media captures non-unique views. That is, if one user opens the post 5 times, the counter will show 5 views.

Coverage

This SMM performance indicator shows how many people have contacted the posted content at least once, and only unique visitors are taken into account during the calculations. The overall reach can be segmented into three types:

● organic (natural) - the number of unique views received from subscribers of the group or public;
● advertising (commercial) - the number of clicks originating from ads or paid posts;
● viral - the number of displays of content to users who are not subscribers (obtained using reposts or direct links).

Each of the three metrics is determined by very specific factors. The amount of organic reach depends on the volume of the subscription base and the frequency of publications, advertising - on your financial capabilities and targeting accuracy, and virality - on the quality and thematicity of the content. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Everything would be even clearer if it were not for the ranking algorithms of social networks, but this is a topic for a separate conversation.

KPIs in SMM for assessing interaction with subscribers

If your publications are read, that's half the battle. It is much more important to get feedback from users. The three basic metrics we are interested in are likes, comments, and reposts. They can be easily calculated using the Analytics tool included in SmmBox - provide a link to the community and the system will display statistical data accurate to a specific day (depending on the options selected).

However, the list of metrics is not limited to those listed above. Let's figure it out.

Attractiveness

Shows how many people from among your subscribers liked the posted content. It is calculated by the formula:

(likes / subscribers) * 100%

Sociability level

(comments / followers) * 100%

Growth rate

Numerical characteristics of content virality. The higher this indicator, the more effective your content marketing and, as a result, the cheaper it costs new subscribers. It is considered as follows:

(reposts / posts) * 100%

Engagement volume

Allows you to assess the overall level of interaction with the target audience. Expression:

([likes + reposts + comments] / subscribers) * 100%

UGC gain

(UGC / total number of publications) * 100%

Engagement rate

We have already considered this indicator of the effectiveness of SMM in the article devoted to. Recall that Engagement Rate has several subspecies:

● Total ER - (the number of subscribers involved / the volume of the subscriber base) * 100, shows which of the users, in principle, is inclined to interact with the content;
● ER per day - (number of engagement per day / number of subscribers) * 100%, with its help you can calculate the average daily activity of the community;
● ER per post - (number of engagement per post / number of subscribers at the time of posting) * 100%, allows you to assess people's interest in a particular post;
● ER by views - (engagement per post / number of views) * 100%, similar to the previous one, but less accurate, since social networks do not keep track of unique views;
● ER by reach - (total number of engagement / total reach) * 100%, helps to understand how many readers have responded to the post in one way or another.

When assessing the effectiveness of SMM, you need to monitor not only the actions of users, but also your own. After all, the best way to increase brand loyalty of subscribers is to closely interact with them: communicate, answer questions and provide timely support directly on social networks. To control ourselves, the following indicators will help us:

Average response time

The speed of the administration's reaction to messages from users is determined. VKontakte and Facebook calculate this value automatically by displaying a corresponding notification in the community chat interface.

To estimate the dynamics of changes in the average response time (in minutes) for the reporting period, you can use the following expression:

(response time for the previous period / response time for the current period - 1) * 100%

Response rate

As the name suggests, the ratio shows how many questions users received answers to in principle:

(number of answers) / (number of questions) * 100%

I burn the chip: according to the analytical service JagaJam, Russian enterprises that have offices in social networks do not answer even half of the users' questions. And the worst of all is on Google+, and YouTube is the record holder - here you can get an answer in 40% of cases.

Frequency of brands' responses to questions from subscribers on Runet social networks:

Thus, having only one efficient support team will give you a significant competitive advantage.

SMM and conversion counting

Reach, reactions, and engagement are good things, of course. However, business is primarily interested in the number of sales. The most common question a client asks is, "How many buyers will I get on the way out?" And this is the main mistake: social networks must be considered as another channel of communication, as well as an image asset - SMM affects sales indirectly. But you will never be able to convey this simple truth to the customer, therefore, one way or another, you will have to use a number of classic KPIs typical for SEO and contextual advertising.

Volume of attracted traffic

Counting the number of users who came to the target site from social networks is not difficult: it can be implemented using Yandex.Metrica, Google Analytics and UTM tags. When working with SmmBox, everything becomes even easier, since for each URL passed through our short link generator, individual statistics are kept, which allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of literally every post.

However, one should not wait for an influx of visitors to the site earlier than 2-3 months after the start of active promotion of the community. Firstly, people, in principle, are extremely reluctant to leave social networks, and secondly, new subscribers will not switch to third-party resources until they get to know the company better and make sure that the links do not lead to a phishing resource.

Leads and CPL

The number of leads (that is, people who are ready to interact with the brand and have completed the target action) is easiest to calculate if the collection of orders is carried out directly in the community. In this regard, VKontakte has practically no competitors - the site offers many widgets for accepting applications, which can be accessed through "Management" -> "Applications".

The built-in functionality of the online store also demonstrates good results. We recommend not to be lazy and transfer the entire product catalog to the community - this way you can attract the attention of those who do not want to bother registering on third-party resources, which means that you can reduce Cost Per Lead. As for this indicator, it is calculated according to the classic formula:

(total cost of promotion) / (number of leads)

Here you should consider not only the net advertising budget, but also the costs of creating viral content, paid posts in related communities, fees for bloggers who talk about your community, etc.

Cost per click (CPC)

It is used to assess the profitability of contextual advertising, but it can also be used in the field of SMM. The formula will look like this:

However, a more appropriate metric is the cost of followers. To find out, it is enough to substitute the number of new subscribers in the denominator. Considering how reluctant social media users are to click on external links, this is the most sensible approach.

To count or not to count?

If your eyes are already running wild from the abundance of metrics and terms, I hasten to reassure you: although the list of SMM performance indicators is not limited to the above, you do not need to use all of them in your work. The best option is to choose the 5-10 most suitable ones, starting from the assigned tasks, otherwise the lion's share of the working time will have to be spent on tables and formulas. To make it easier for you to navigate, here is the standard structure of the report used in most marketing agencies.

Report of an SMM specialist at the end of the calendar month:

Such a report can be supplemented and modified depending on the specifics of the site. For example, for Pinterest, the number of repins is important, because many of its users perceive the photo on their board as an idea for a future purchase, and this indicator allows us to estimate the share of the hot audience at the end of the sales funnel. When working on VKontakte, one should take into account the number of subscriptions to the mailing list through a special widget - this will help to identify the most loyal users.

In any case, when working with KPIs, you need to remember: even the best SMM specialist will not tell you exactly what target values ​​you need to achieve. The optimal numbers depend on many factors, including the topic, the nature of the target audience, the region (if geo-referencing takes place) and many others, not to mention the constantly changing algorithms for ranking social networks. With this in mind, the most optimal approach was and remains the analysis of competitors. By comparing this data with the results of your peers in the industry, you can reliably assess how justified your digital marketing efforts are.

However, they will not be of any use if you do not understand what is happening. This article will outline the social media performance metrics that need to be measured when, along with tips on how to use them, and which ones to focus on.

1. Tracking audience growth through social mentions

Not the most important, but a key metric for understanding the impact of social media is social mentions.

Simply put, this metric measures how many people are talking about a brand (or content and industry) in social media. How much talk about the brand? Do people talk about this industry / offer?

Social mentions are a little more complicated than just counting mentions in tweets and hashtags. It is necessary to measure not only posts and messages related to the brand, but also how many people talk about it.

Usually, there are three ways to do this:

1. @Username: This one is simple. When people add a user's name to a tweet, the user is notified. This is usually called a mention.
2. Brand references: Same mention, but without “tagging” the username. In such cases, notifications do not come and this can be a problem, but there are tools that can track these mentions.
3. Hash tags: The most common way people talk about a brand, especially if it's well known. This also includes hashtags related to events, products, and campaigns.

The scaling up of “social mentions” depends heavily on other marketing and content strategies. If the audience isn't talking about the company, it may need to get its message across better. You can try different messages until you find the most appropriate one. You need to watch what will find the best response from the audience.

Perhaps the content doesn't impress them enough. Then you need to go back to the beginning and see what the audience wants. Do they prefer visual or textual content? Comprehensive tutorials or short (possibly humorous) videos? Consumer research can help answer these questions.

A tool like Ahrefs can help you measure the number of inbound links to your site. While this may not seem like a big deal for social media, it can help you find your most popular content.

This can also be done using the Google Search Console:

You need to determine what content is resonating the best in the rest of the web, and then put extra effort into promoting it on social media. Organic and paid distribution ensures that coverage is as high as possible.

2. Coverage of publications

While the previous metric measures how much people are talking about a brand, reach measures how many people have seen content shared by the brand.

Therefore, reach is a good indicator of potential audience size. It measures how far content and brand message spread across social media. For example, on Vkontakte and Facebook, “total reach” shows the number of people who have seen the post.

Reach is calculated when content appears in someone's news feed. This metric is divided into three different types:

1. Organic reach: the number of people who saw the post / tweet in their feed. This metric is getting harder to maintain as different social algorithms place more emphasis on posts shared by friends, family, and followers.
2. Viral Coverage: the number of people who saw the content as a result of sharing on social networks.
3. Paid coverage: the number of people who saw the content due to the promotion of the post.

Paying for promoted posts has become a popular method for distributing content due to organic reach issues:

Of course, budget can be a problem. You need to ensure your brand gets the best results for every dollar you spend on advertising. Therefore, it's best to check your content organically before promoting it further on paid social advertising platforms.

Let's say a company shares ten blog posts with their Facebook and Vkontakte subscribers. Of these, two had the best CTRs and the highest number of shares. Since this content resonated with the audience the best, it is safe to advertise it through Promoted Posts.

You also need to make sure that the right audience will see this content. Targeting is important and will help direct your content to people like those who have already shown interest in it.

1. Individual audience: you need to upload your list of customers or subscribers, and Facebook and Vkontakte will set up targeting based on their demographics and interests, assuming that these customers have linked email addresses to their profiles.
2. Similar audience: data about current fans and people interacting with posts is used to target similar people.

With your targeting in place, it's time to get creative with your message. It is worth starting with the same text and images that were used in the organic distribution of publications. But it's important to try new approaches to make sure the company gets the best out of its content.

While promoted posts can help you get quick wins, you also need to optimize for organic reach. Quick and actionable tips on how to do this:

• Optimize your profile: Use your target keywords across all social profiles to make them easier to find. Make sure your profile descriptions are clear.
• Be closer to people: Make sure that the speech in both posts and in person with users is similar to the conversations that occur in real life.
• Share the right content: Publish educational and engaging content that will be of value to people. Explicitly sponsored posts rarely drive engagement.
• Enlist the help of supporters: Some of the readers are more loyal to the company and love its content more than others. You need to identify such customers and connect them to the distribution of content.
• Mutual shares: Share content from other brands. This will provide an opportunity to build relationships with other brands and increase your visibility.

3. Building trust and nurturing customers through engagement

User engagement is by far the most important social metric of all. It measures how people interact with a brand and its content across all social media platforms.

Engagement is determined by the actions users take with posts, tweets, and stories. For example, comments, likes and shares, reposts.

The more engagement posts get, the higher the viral reach will be. While it is easy to view these actions as one-off events, they should be an indicator of a long-term relationship with the audience.

High engagement means that the audience knows and trusts the company. This is an indicator that you have managed to create a community around your brand.

When measuring engagement, you need to look at the following social media performance indicators:

1. Likes and Shares: the easiest metrics to track. From Vkontakte to YouTube, likes and shares are universal actions that users can use to express their attitude to content.
2. Audience growth: the number of subscribers acquired in a certain period. Tracking the rate of new subscribers can lead to changes in the schedule of posts and their frequency.
3. Subscribers to subscriptions ratio: it shows authority on social media. If a profile has 500 subscriptions but only 90 subscribers, it can alienate other people.
4. Audience Mentions: As noted earlier, users who mention a brand can help identify the most active audience members (not to mention boost overall reach).

To increase engagement, you need to share engaging content. 82% of Twitter users watch videos on this platform, which means you need to consider adding videos to your arsenal of content (if not already there).

Video content can also be reused across different networks. A 7 minute YouTube video can be turned into several shorter clips for Facebook and Twitter. You can then use the shorter clips as quick overviews on Snapchat and Instagram Stories.

It is not so important whether the clips are shot on a smartphone or on full-fledged studio equipment - the main thing is that they tell the stories that are in demand.

4. Motivation to action through influence

Last but not least on the list is influence. The impact that a brand has on its audience is taken into account, as well as the impact of those who talk about the brand on their own audience.

While this may be a controversial sign of social success, its importance cannot be denied. In fact, many believe that the impact a brand has on its audience is far more important than its size.

There is no one-size-fits-all way to measure impact, but there are reliable sources. For example, Klout is a great tool for measuring your own influence, as well as the influence of similar companies and competitors.

Increasing your influence is a long process. You need to continually deliver valuable content to your audience and provide a platform for inspiring conversations.

This means you have to start that conversation yourself, get in touch with your readers, reply to their messages and tweets, offer help, and just talk to them like a person.

You also need to do this with other influencers in your space. Not only on social media, but also in other communities with which they interact. Commenting and sharing the content they create can also be helpful.

Contests and events should be run and subscribers should be encouraged to participate. Explore how people use certain hash tags and create content about these topics.

SEMrush posts weekly conversations under the #semrushchat hash tag to start conversations about specific topics:

They get insights and create blog posts from them, thereby getting the most out of user generated content.

These examples are designed to awaken creativity. The overarching theme is the value they deliver and the conversations they inspire. Each brand's content and message should do the same.

Instead of conclusions ...

There are dozens of metrics that help measure social media success. Clicks, conversions, and ROI are a real benchmark for a marketer, but they are useless without the “rungs” outlined in this article.

There are many methods and tools for measuring these metrics, but what is more important is not how to measure them, but how to improve them.

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One of the main problems when working with a social media marketing (SMM) specialist is the inability to determine whether he is working or just garbage is suffering imitating violent activity. Social media marketing makes no sense without key performance indicators (KPIs) that demonstrate how well and efficiently the work is being done. Let's talk about this and tell you how the analysis of the effectiveness of SMM promotion is carried out.

Performance indicators in SMM

There are several basic parameters that can be used to analyze and determine the results of social media activity. By themselves, they are not capable of providing comprehensive information, but using them together will help build a complete picture.

So, the key performance indicators of SMM are:

1. growth in the number of subscribers to the community / group;
2. coverage of advertisements;
3. coverage of posts; (read also about viral reach)
4. user activity;
5. increased activity during the period of competitions and sweepstakes;
6. an increase in website traffic from a group in a social network and an increase in traffic;
7. economic parameters;
8. and of course the most important thing is the number of targeted actions performed by users.

Let's consider each indicator of the effectiveness of SMM separately.

Community / group subscriber growth

The steady growth in the number of subscribers is the most obvious indicator of effectiveness in SMM and the fact that work is being done in the right direction. If the audience is growing every day, it means that the group contains useful and interesting content, provides the necessary and relevant information. But in this case, you need to pay attention to another indicator of the effectiveness of SMM - user activity. It so happens that the number of subscribers is impressive, but there are no or very few likes, comments and reposts as such. This may indicate a large percentage of non-target audience or uninteresting content.

In this case, you need to ask the CMM manager what methods he uses to increase the number of subscribers. As a rule, advertising tools are considered the most effective: promo posts and targeted advertising. But before launching them, it is important to identify the age, gender, location and interests of the target audience, so as not to "catch up" in a community of people whose topic or product is completely uninteresting to them.

This method of recruiting subscribers in social media marketing is considered "white", while there are also "black" ones, when an SMM specialist sins by cheating - attracting offers (people who perform the necessary actions for a fee) and bots (services that imitate user activity on social networks ). The result of these actions is seemingly ideal: the number of subscribers is growing steadily, but the SMM efficiency indicator has not been achieved - the activity in the group is low, as well as the volume of sales.

Reach of advertisements

Reach is the number of unique users who saw your ad.

At the same time, coverage is a rather unreliable thing in analyzing the effectiveness of SMM, since it shows the number of users to whom the advertisement was shown, but does not display whether they have viewed it to the end or just scrolled through the feed. Therefore, coverage should be considered in conjunction with engagement, that is, people's reaction to a promo post.

• age, gender, interests and hobbies of the audience;
• the location of potential customers to whom the ad will be shown;
• time of ad display;
• type of ad (pay per 1000 impressions or per clicks);
• photo, text and ad format;
• increase the budget.

In addition to this indicator, when analyzing the effectiveness of CMM promotion, it is also important to take into account the number of clicks on an advertisement and the percentage of completion of the action you need (following a link, filling out a form, ordering a product).

Post coverage

In addition to the reach of your advertisements, you also need to track the reach of your regular posts on a page. You can view both the total coverage of the group and individual publications. And if this indicator is steadily growing upwards, then we can conclude that the content of your group is interesting to a wide audience, and the KPI of SMM has been achieved.

On Facebook and Instagram, coverage is divided into paid and organic. The latter means the number of people who saw the post in their feed, the paid one is the one we talked about above. In recent years, there has been a deliberate decline in organic reach on these social media platforms in an effort to push users to place advertisements.

User Activity

Audience activity on social networks is another important indicator of the effectiveness of SMM promotion. The engagement of subscribers is determined by approvals (likes and marks), distribution (reposts, reposts, retweets), comments. All this speaks only in favor of the group or community, since a page where it does not even smell of activity may seem boring and useless to potential subscribers, and they will simply go to competitors.

The low activity of subscribers with their impressive number can be triggered by two reasons:

1. A small percentage of the target audience. The case when many subscribers were recruited by an SMM specialist "for show" and they are not at all interested in your content. Exit: search and attract target users who will certainly be interested in the information of your group.
2. Content that is irrelevant, boring, and irrelevant to the topic. For example, pictures of animals on the page of an online store of household appliances, anecdotes in a group selling drugs, an excessive number of advertising posts. Exit: studying the target audience and updating the content.

To analyze the effectiveness of this SMM indicator, you need to view each post and track statistics in order to find out which publications are liked more, where they leave more comments, and which ones get more reposts. For example, on Facebook and VKontakte, all this data is displayed in the built-in page statistics, while on other social networks you will have to view each article manually.

However, this parameter of SMM efficiency has a downside. A large number of likes, reposts and comments may not always contribute to the desired results, for example, sales. Or it may be that the post published yesterday was marked with the lowest engagement rate, but today they wrote to you with a desire to buy a product for an impressive amount. Therefore, this indicator of the effectiveness of SMM should be paid attention to in conjunction with others - an increase in the number of subscribers and the coverage of posts.

Remember to visit competitors' pages from time to time and compare their user activity with yours.

Increased activity during the period of contests and sweepstakes

As you know, various contests, promotions and sweepstakes with valuable prizes are in great favor with users of social networks. The level of all performance indicators (subscriptions, likes, reposts, comments) during this period, as a rule, increases sharply. And social media marketing often counts on this. Of course, among the attracted subscribers there will be a large number of fans of everything free, but still some of them may remain in the group and become the target audience. And their interest and further actions will depend on the quality of the content of your page.

To attract your target audience, come up with a prize that resonates with your community theme.

Before the start of the competition / drawing, the SMM manager needs to think carefully about all the nuances in order to be ready for a wave of negativity that the community may be covering after summing up the results. To avoid this, it is necessary to clearly describe all the points and mention the penalties for those who violate the conditions.

Growth of site traffic from a group in a social network and an increase in traffic

This performance indicator is relevant only if the goal of SMM promotion is specifically sales, and the company is fundamentally important for the transition of users from the group to the site. Therefore, the main part of an SMM manager's job is to increase conversion on the site and increase traffic from the page on the social network. To do this, each publication mentions the address of the resource, and an active link is placed in the description of the group, or targeted advertising is launched, the main goal of which is to increase traffic to the site.

You can see how effective the work done is by installing a statistics counter on the site. And if users consistently follow the link, this means that the KPI in SMM has been achieved.

However, it is important to work not only on the amount of traffic, but also on its quality. As you know, a user who has spent more than 15 seconds on your site is considered interested. And what is the use of visitors who did not stay there for 10 seconds, even if there are an impressive number of them? That's right, no. The main indicators of KPI on the site will help to determine the effectiveness of transitions. How to measure them and what services to use, we will consider below.

Tracking KPIs on the site

Such statistics services as Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics will help to carry out a detailed analysis. Key performance indicators on the site include:

• The number of visitors who crossed over from social networks (percentage).
• The average time that users spent on the site (if it is 1-3 minutes, then the KPI is considered achieved).
• Bounce rate. This is the percentage of site visits that shows how many pages the audience has viewed, and allows you to determine the success of the resource and the quality of the transition. A high bounce rate (60% or more) indicates that users are not interested in viewing other pages, and even more so in purchasing a product. The reason may lie in slow page loading, inconvenient interface, uninteresting or irrelevant content.
• The number of pages viewed per session. This metric again indicates whether the visitor is interested and how much.
• The percentage of users who performed the required action (purchase, registration on the site, subscription to a newsletter, etc.) and income from a client.

If, when analyzing the effectiveness of SMM, none of the indicators meets your expectations, you need to pay attention, as mentioned above, to the quality of the content and the interface of the site. If everything is in order with him, the SMM manager should reconsider the parameters of the target audience when launching an advertising campaign.

Economic indicators of SMM promotion

As a rule, the more users in the group, the less money should be spent on attracting each new subscriber. The largest amounts for advertising campaigns usually go at the initial stage of promotion. And if there is a stable increase in subscribers, coverage grows and activity in the group increases, but the budget for social media marketing does not exceed the permissible norm, then the economic indicator of efficiency is normal: the SMM specialist knows how to properly distribute funds and understand the audience.

The number of targeted actions performed by users

The attendance of the group, as such, does not matter much for the company. It is much more important to know whether subscribers are doing the actions for which SMM promotion is being carried out, and how recognizable the brand is in the market. Targeted actions include:

1. Registration on the website.
2. Subscribe to the newsletter.
3. Online call and communication with a consultant.
4. Filling out a questionnaire or other form.
5. Downloading materials.
6. Submitting a request for something.
7. Making a purchase (if it is an online store).
8. The attendance of the institution (if it is a restaurant, sports club, hotel, etc.).
9. Letter to direct / personal.
10. Go to the "Contacts" page.

In this case, when analyzing the effectiveness of SMM, two indicators are measured: the total number of actions performed and the number of users who performed the action.

Conclusion

It is very difficult to measure the effectiveness of SMM promotion, analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of a specialist's work manually, so it is better to resort to automated monitoring services that will help you quickly get the data you need. These include built-in statistics services in social networks and statistics counters for sites (Yandex.Metrica, Google Analytics).

Each business can use its own, individual set of the above KPIs. It is important to remember that it is difficult to give an accurate assessment of the effectiveness of promoting your brand on social networks based on only one of them - it is necessary to use these tools in combination. They will help to identify whether SMM promotion is being carried out in the right direction, what is interesting to your target audience, what should be changed and improved in the group / community, and what should be abandoned.

This article is relevant not only for companies, brands and business owners, but also for SMM managers and job seekers who want to try their hand at social media marketing.

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How is the analysis of the effectiveness of SMM promotion carried out, analytics

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