Determining the effectiveness of SMM.

It is generally accepted that every self-respecting company must have a group on a social network. However, data from a study conducted by L2 Think Tank shows that social networks have little incentive to sell products, with only 2.4% of social media generating clicks to landing pages. Learn how to correctly evaluate the effectiveness of your company's presence in online communities in our article.

Efficiency social networks for a company's sales is different depending on many factors. It is obvious and significant that well-known global brands are actively using social networks for promotion, primarily because they clearly understand the need and effectiveness of SMM. A group in the Internet community acquires serious commercial significance only with a certain level of coverage of the target audience, combined with a sufficient level of communication among the members of this community.

It is possible and necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of brand promotion in social networks using three indicators (Figure 1): the commercial activity coefficient (CCA), which directly reflects the commercial result, shows the effectiveness of the network as a sales channel for the company's products; business activity ratio (KDA) of group members in a social network, which allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of users performing targeted actions (downloading a price list, ordering a cost calculation, creating an order configuration); audience interaction coefficient (KVA), which shows the effectiveness of engaging users in communication with representatives of the enterprise and other users of the Internet community.

This approach allows for a comprehensive assessment of a specific group in a social network as a marketing tool that can perform the functions of promotion, sales of products, and also determine the qualitative preferences of buyers. I propose to consider in detail each of the indicators and, using the example of our company, analyze the effectiveness of brand promotion in social networks through online communities.

Indicator 1. Commercial activity ratio

This coefficient directly reflects the commercial results of promotional campaigns in social networks, since it depends on the total number of users and on the number of users who made a commercial action and eventually became your customers. The calculation formula is shown in Figure 2.

A change in the coefficient of commercial activity will indicate a positive or negative trend in the development of the enterprise's Internet community.

Metric 2. Audience engagement ratio

Allows you to assess the level of audience involvement in communication. As you know, all participants in a social network are assigned a unique identification number, which they receive upon registration; as a rule, it is specified in the user ID in the address of his page (for example, http://vk.com/id146939985679) or as a record. In addition, the indicator makes it possible to control the activity of each member of the group. Therefore, if we divide all the allowable user activity into stages, then we can form a rating of participant activity (Table 1).

Thanks to the segmentation of group members, you get the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of brand promotion in social networks. The main condition is that the group must be active, that is, constantly updated with content. Both you and the members of the group should be active (they can use the “Offer News” option or simply post a message). The causes of insufficient activity are conditionally divided into two groups: direct and indirect.

The immediate reasons for the poor performance of social networks for the company include: incorrectly selected target audience; incorrectly submitted profile (questionnaire) of the enterprise; insufficient level of thematic content; ineffective product positioning; inability to communicate with company representatives; ignoring the communication actions of users.

Indirect causes are of an organizational nature: the company's products are not competitive in certain parameters (for example, in price); there is no flexible approach to payment (for example, it is not possible to accept payment upon receipt of products or make payments via the Internet); there is no possibility of delivery to the buyer (including cash on delivery).

User actions are segmented according to previously formed activity stages. As a result, the user is assigned a stage that corresponds to the maximum activity. For example, if a user has viewed information, communicated with company representatives and made a transaction, then the fifth stage of activity is assigned to him. Thus, the sum of the shares of stages 4 (r4) and 5 (r5) will be characterized as a general indicator of the interaction of the audience of the group with the content.

Indicator 3. Business activity ratio

The final indicator of business activity of the audience is the efficiency factor of the Internet community, which objectively shows how effectively and successfully users are involved in communication with representatives of the enterprise.

To determine the reach of the audience of a social network, it is necessary to evaluate the actions of users. Business activity score reflects how the content in your company group is relevant to the interests of users and community members. Users must perform targeted actions on the site by clicking on links from social networks: downloading a price list, requesting a meeting, registering.

Experience in promoting highly specialized services

Before deciding to promote a brand on social networks, you should seriously think about the target audience and effectiveness of SMM. This is especially important in the case of highly specialized b2b segments: it is very difficult to competently form an appropriate thematic Internet community and conduct an effective marketing campaign.

Let's analyze the marketing effectiveness of a social network using the example of our company's Facebook group. Changes in the audience interaction coefficient are reflected in the graph (Figure 5).

The analysis showed that the number of users directly affects the interaction coefficient of community members, the level of communication within the group, the degree of user activity interacting with commercial content. Moreover, as the number of community users increases, the share of the audience, which is limited only to viewing the company profile, decreases.

But with a decrease in the number of participants, this indicator increases, therefore, the content of the group becomes irrelevant. This factor negatively affected the marketing component of the community, we not only began to lose potential buyers, but activity in the field of communication and commercial activities has seriously decreased.

The main bet was made on the concentration of the target audience on the corporate website. In this case search promotion and contextual advertising allow us to attract our specific audience, while thematic content and communication functionality increase loyalty and retain users. Accordingly, we give priority to an effective corporate website. However, if niche Internet communities are created, this will allow b2b companies of a similar profile to open up new opportunities for promoting goods and services.

One of the main problems when working with an SMM (social media marketing) specialist is the inability to determine whether he is working or just suffering garbage imitating violent activity. Social media marketing is meaningless without key performance indicators (KPIs) that demonstrate how well and fully 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.

SMM Performance Metrics

There are several basic parameters that allow you to analyze and determine the results of activity in social media. By themselves, they are not able to provide comprehensive information, but using them in a complex will help build a complete picture.

So, the key performance indicators of SMM are:

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

Let's consider each SMM performance indicator separately.

Community/Group Subscriber Growth

Steady growth in the number of subscribers is the most obvious indicator of the effectiveness of SMM and that the work is being done in the right direction. If the audience grows 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 happens that the number of subscribers is impressive, but there are no likes, comments and reposts as such or very few. 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: promotional 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” with 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 - by attracting offers (people who perform the necessary actions for a reward) and bots (services that imitate user activity on social networks ). The result of these actions seems to be ideal: the number of subscribers is growing steadily, but the SMM performance indicator has not been reached - the activity in the group is low, as well as sales volumes.

Ad Reach

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

At the same time, coverage is a rather unreliable thing in the analysis of the effectiveness of SMM, as it shows the number of users who were shown an advertisement, but does not indicate whether it was viewed to the end or simply scrolled through the feed. Therefore, coverage should be considered in conjunction with engagement, that is, the reaction of people to a promo post.

• age, gender, interests and hobbies of the audience;
• location of potential customers to whom advertising will be shown;
• ad display time;
• ad type (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 completion of the action you need (following a link, filling out a form, ordering a product).

Post Reach

In addition to the reach of ads, you also need to track the reach of regular posts posted on the page. You can view both the overall reach of the group and individual posts. 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 KPI SMM has been achieved.

On Facebook and Instagram, reach is divided into paid and organic. The latter refers to the number of people who saw the post in their feed, paid - the one we talked about above. In recent years, these social networks have seen a deliberate decrease in organic reach in order to encourage users to place ads.

User activity

The activity of the audience in social networks is another important indicator of the effectiveness of SMM promotion. Subscriber engagement is determined by approvals (likes and likes), distribution (reposts, reposts, retweets), comments. All this speaks only in favor of a group or community, since a page where there is not even a 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 provoked 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. Output: finding and attracting target users who will certainly be interested in the information of your group.
2. Irrelevant, boring, irrelevant content. For example, pictures of animals on the page of an online store household appliances, jokes - in the drug sales group, an excessive number of advertising posts. Output: studying the target audience and updating content.

To analyze the effectiveness of this SMM metric, you need to look at each post and track statistics in order to find out which posts get more likes, which leave more comments, and which get more shares. 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 SMM efficiency parameter has a downside. A large number of likes, reposts and comments may not always contribute to the desired results, for example, sales. Or it could 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 SMM performance indicator should be paid attention to along with others - the growth in the number of subscribers and the coverage of posts.

Do not forget to visit the pages of competitors from time to time and compare their user activity with yours.

Increasing activity during the period of competitions and draws

As you know, various contests, promotions and sweepstakes with valuable prizes are highly favored by users of social networks. The level of all performance indicators (subscriptions, likes, reposts, comments) during this period, as a rule, increases dramatically. And in social media marketing they often rely 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 the theme of your community.

An SMM manager needs to carefully think through all the nuances before the start of a contest/raffle in order to be prepared for a wave of negativity that the community may experience 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 purpose of SMM promotion is specifically sales, and it is fundamentally important for the company to transfer users from the group to the site. Therefore, the main part of the work of an SMM manager is to increase the 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 purpose of which is to increase traffic to the site.

You can see how effective the work being 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 spends more than 15 seconds on your site is considered interested. And what is the use of visitors who did not stay there even 10 seconds, even if there are an impressive number of them? That's right, none. To determine the effectiveness of transitions, the main KPI indicators on the site will help. How to measure them and what services to use, we will consider below.

Tracking KPIs on the site

Such statistical services as Yandex.Metrika and Google Analytics will help to conduct a detailed analysis. Key performance indicators on the site include:

• The number of visitors who came from social networks (percentage).
• The average time that users spent on the site (if it is 1-3 minutes, then the KPI is considered to be achieved).
• bounce rate. This is the percentage of visits to the site, showing 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 (from 60% and above) indicates that users are not interested in viewing other pages, and even more so, in buying a product. The reason may lie in the slow loading of pages, 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 completed the desired action (purchase, registration on the site, subscription to the newsletter, etc.) and revenue per 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 site interface. 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 sums for advertising campaigns usually go at the initial stage of promotion. And if there is a steady increase in subscribers, coverage grows and activity in the group increases, but the budget for social media marketing does not exceed the allowable norm, then the economic performance indicator is normal: the SMM specialist knows how to properly distribute funds and understands the audience.

The number of targeted actions performed by users

The attendance of the group, as such, is not of great importance for the company. It is much more important to know whether subscribers perform the actions for which SMM promotion is carried out, and how recognizable the brand is in the market. Target actions include:

1. Registration on the site.
2. Newsletter subscription.
3. Online call and communication with a consultant.
4. Completing a survey or other form.
5. Downloading materials.
6. Sending a request for something.
7. Making a purchase (if it is an online store).
8. 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 taken and the number of users who took 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 necessary data. These include built-in statistics services in social networks and statistics counters for websites (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 accurately assess the effectiveness of promoting your brand on social networks using only one of them - you need to use these tools in combination. They will help to identify whether SMM promotion is going in the right direction, what is interesting for your target audience, what should be changed and improved in the group/community, and what is better to refuse.

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.

How can I help you?

How performance analysis is done SMM promotion, analytics

5 (100%) 6 votes

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 with and give tips on how to use them and what to focus on.

1. Track Audience Growth Through Social Mentions

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

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

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

Usually, there are three ways to do this:

1. @username: This one is simple. When people add a username to a tweet, the user is notified. This is usually called a mention.
2. Brand Mentions: Same mention, but without "tagging" the username. In such cases, notifications are not received 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. It also includes hash tags 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, perhaps the company needs to communicate its message better. You can try different messages before you find the most suitable one. You need to look at what will find the best response from the audience.

Maybe 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 guides or short (perhaps humorous) videos? Consumer research will help answer these questions.

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

You can also do this using the Google Search Console:

You need to determine what content gets the best response from the rest of the network, and then put in the extra effort to promote it on social media. Organic and paid distribution ensures that the reach is as high as possible.

2. Coverage of publications

While the previous metric measures how many people talk about a brand, Reach measures how many people have seen the content shared by a brand.

Therefore, reach is a good indicator of potential audience size. It measures how far a brand's content and message travels 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 newsfeed. 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 becoming harder to maintain as various social algorithms pay more attention to 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 Reach: the number of people who saw the content due to the promotion of the post.

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

Of course, the budget can be a problem. You need a guarantee that the brand will get the best results from every dollar spent on advertising. Therefore, it is better to check content organically before promoting it further on paid social advertising platforms.

Let's say a company shares ten blog posts with its Facebook and Vkontakte followers. Of these, two had the best click-through rate and a large number of shares. Because this content has resonated best with the audience, it is safe to promote it through Promoted Posts.

You also need to make sure that the right audience sees this content. Targeting is important and will help direct content to people similar to 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 target based on their demographics and interests, assuming that these customers have linked addresses Email to your profiles.
2. Similar Audience: uses data about current fans and people interacting with posts to target similar people.

With your targeting set, it's time to get creative with your message. It's 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 is getting the best out of their content.

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

• Optimize your profile: Use your target keywords on all social profiles to make them easier to find. Make sure that the descriptions in the profile are written clearly.
• Being closer to people: Make sure that the speech, both in posts and in personal communication with users, is similar to conversations that occur in real life.
• Sharing the right content: Publish educational and interesting content that will be of value to people. Clearly sponsored posts rarely drive engagement.
• Enlist the help of supporters: Some of the readers are more dedicated to the company and love its content more than others. It is necessary to identify such customers and connect them to the distribution of content.
• Mutual reposts: Share content from other brands. This will give you the 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 networks.

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

The more engagement your posts get, the higher your viral reach will be. And while it's easy to view these actions as one-time events, they should be an indicator of a long-term relationship with your audience.

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

When measuring engagement, pay attention to the following social media performance metrics:

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 given period. Keeping track of the rate at which new subscribers are added can lead to changes in the posting schedule and frequency.
3. Subscribers to following ratio: it shows credibility in social media. If a profile has 500 followers, but only 90 followers, it can alienate other people.
4. Audience Mentions: As noted earlier, users who mention a brand can help identify the most engaged audience members (not to mention increase overall reach).

To increase engagement, you need to share engaging content. 82% of Twitter users watch videos on the platform, which means you should consider adding video to your content arsenal (if it isn't already there).

Video content can also be reused in 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 synopses in Snapchat and Instagram Stories.

It doesn't matter if the clips are filmed on a smartphone or on full-fledged studio equipment - the main thing is that they tell popular stories.

4. Motivation through influence

Last but not least is influence. The influence that the 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 can 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 much more important than its size.

Not universal way measure the impact, but there are reliable sources. For example, Klout is a great tool for measuring your own influence, as well as the influence of peers and competitors.

Increasing your influence is a long process. It is necessary to constantly deliver valuable content to the audience, and provide a platform for inspiring conversations.

This means starting that conversation yourself, getting in touch with readers, responding to their messages and tweets, offering help, and just talking like a human to them.

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

It is necessary to hold contests and events, and encourage subscribers to take part in them. Study how people use certain hash tags and create content on those topics.

SEMrush host weekly chats under the hash tag #semrushchat to start a conversation on a specific topic:

They get insights and create blog posts based on them, thereby getting maximum benefit from user generated content.

These examples are meant to spark creativity. The overarching theme is the value they deliver and the conversations they inspire. The content and message of each brand should do the same.

Instead of conclusions...

There are dozens of metrics that help determine social media success. Clicks, conversions, and ROI are a true marketer's benchmark, but they're useless without the "stepping stones" outlined in this article.

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

5 (100%) - 1 ratings

KPI (key performance indicators) characterize the company's activities. With their help, the organization builds an optimal work strategy. If you explain completely plain language, then KPIs are indicators that make it clear whether the company is able to achieve its goals. Or is the organization trying in vain?

• Paid advertising (targeting / retargeting / crops);
• Community management.

We set and evaluate KPI in SMM

Regardless of your goals, setting KPIs for your personal community is not a difficult task. Think for just a minute. And imagine the following situation: you lead a community on the VKontakte social network, regularly fill it, and interact with the audience. For what? What is your goal at this stage of promotion?

To make it easier to formulate the answer to this question, it is worth referring to the possible options. And to understand what, in principle, social platforms are used for.

1. Attracting traffic to the resource;
2. Interaction with potential customers, processing applications and questions;
3. Increasing brand awareness;
4. Making orders in a group in the absence of a site.

Of course, there are other reasons for working with a social network, but we have considered the most common ones. In addition, the user can find several reasons to promote a business on a particular site at once. Everything is individual.

It's time to talk about the effectiveness of promotion and how to evaluate it.

Community size

Business owners strive to get as many members as possible into their group. An extensive audience of subscribers is hardly a hindrance to anyone. Community size affects a variety of metrics. The more people visit the community, the more likes, views, comments, reposts and other activity. All this has a positive effect on the internal search in the network. And the figure itself, if it is really high, leads new users to the idea that the community has a good reputation. So why not join an interesting group too?

After all, she is trusted by a huge number of people. And it's always tempting.

And everything would be fine if not for one “But”. Agree, quantity does not mean quality. And it is very important to monitor the quality of subscribers. Especially in the "era" of rigid system algorithms. After all, the most important thing is not to cross out your own efforts with an unfortunate mistake.

• Percentage of bots/offers and other "deceased"

These users are not only not useful, but they can also harm your community. A group stuffed with bots has a low chance of ranking in the search. Ideally, bots should be less than 10% of the total subscriber audience.

Bot cheating provides more attractive numbers, but this has little effect. And even not at all! In addition, this phenomenon is not approved by the administration of the social network.

• Are new subscribers your target audience?

Let's move on to a visual example. You are the owner of an online store of children's toys. Its target audience are mothers from 20 to 30 years old. But part of your audience, for some unknown (or understandable) reason, consists of male users. It's quite interesting, isn't it? And what are the chances that these subscribers will want to buy your product? Let this question remain rhetorical. It is easy to guess where this will lead.

It is for this reason that it is important to analyze and filter your personal audience. Check group statistics for gender and age characteristics.

If you work in a specific region of the country, it will not be superfluous to take into account the geodata of subscribers. For example, you advertise your restaurant from Voronezh. So what good will subscribers from St. Petersburg bring you? It is unlikely that they will come to dine in another city. Clear the group of "extra" people, even if they are live users.

Geostatistics

Site transitions

For example, you decide to use Metrica. Proceed as follows:

Reports => Sources => Social networks

Specify the required time frame. We look:

Only general statistical information is provided here. To make the picture a little clearer, you need to use UTM tags.

Activity

This indicator indicates how much subscribers like the content published in the group. How to measure audience activity? Subscribers will do it themselves, through likes, comments and reposts. If we talk about the social network Instagram, then there you can still take into account savings.

What is the most valuable? Answer:

• Reposts;

All metrics in Social Media Marketing can be divided into two broad groups: basic indicators (these are 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 the quantitative characteristics that determine the popularity of the community, and therefore, to understand how effective certain marketing activities and work with the community turned out to be. In this article, we will try to consider all the most commonly used KPIs, dividing the material into several thematic sections for convenience.

Evaluation of 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 indicators that reflect the growth dynamics of the subscription base.

Number of subscribers

The most obvious KPI in SMM, used by specialists of any level. However, for its reliable definition, it is necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff, that is, bots from real people. It is important to do this for the simple reason that the presence of such followers negatively affects other performance indicators and makes calculations difficult, since they do not repost, do not like and do not participate in discussions. Keep in mind that fake accounts can follow you even if you have never resorted to cheating: this is how spammers work, trying to post a link to their resource in the comments at any convenient opportunity. To identify a fake is quite simple, based on the following criteria:

● Lack of original photos - celebrity photos or neutral pictures are used as an avatar and photo album content;
● Personal data is not indicated - profession, place of study and work, presence of relatives, etc. A living person will at least outline the circle of interests;
● Using a nickname instead of a real name - it has historically developed that the regulars of social networks add nicknames to their real names, but do not hide their real names;
● Spammed wall - replete with reposts, often unrelated to each other, and the original entries are frankly promotional;
● The number of friends is measured in thousands - this is typical for public figures, but not for ordinary users.

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

Discount for readers

You are lucky, the smmbox.com service gives out discounts.
Today 15% discount to use the service. You just need to register and enter the promo code when paying smmbox_blog

Number of unsubscribes

This metric helps to understand how effective the posted content is from the position 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 the special Deserter web application. On Instagram, you won’t be able to reliably measure this indicator at all, since site administrators have disabled the API for third-party software.

Audience Growth Dynamics

Calculated according to the formula:

(Net Growth/Total Followers)*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 networks capture 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. General coverage can be segmented into three types:

● organic (natural) - the number of unique views received from group or public subscribers;
● advertising (commercial) - the number of clicks, the source of which is ads or paid posts;
● viral - the number of impressions of content to users who are not subscribers (obtained through 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 thematic nature 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 discussion.

KPI in SMM to evaluate interaction with subscribers

If your publications are read, that's half the battle. Much more important to receive feedback from users. The three basic metrics we are interested in are likes, comments, and shares. They are easy to calculate using the "Analytics" tool included in SmmBox - specify a link to the community and the system will display statistics 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.

Degree of attractiveness

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

(likes/subscribers)*100%

Sociability level

(comments/followers)*100%

growth rate

Numerical characteristic of content virality. The higher this indicator, the more effective your content marketing is and, as a result, the cheaper it is for you to get new subscribers. It is considered like this:

(reposts/posts)*100%

Scope of Involvement

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

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

Growth of UGC

(UGC/total publications)*100%

Engagement rate

We have already considered this SMM performance indicator in an article on. Recall that the Engagement Rate has several subspecies:

● Total ER - (number of subscribers involved / volume of subscription base) * 100, shows which of the users are generally inclined to interact with content;
● ER per day - (number of engagements per day/number of subscribers)*100%, it can be used to calculate the average daily activity of the community;
● ER per post - (number of engagements per post/number of subscribers at the time of posting)*100%, allows you to evaluate 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 records of unique views;
● Reach ER - (Total Engagements/Total Reach)*100%, helps you understand how many readers reacted to a post in one way or another.

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

Average response time

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

To evaluate the dynamics of changes in the average response time (in minutes) over 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 implies, the coefficient shows how many questions users got answered in principle:

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

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

The frequency of brand responses to questions from subscribers in the social networks of Runet:

Thus, having an efficient support team alone will provide you with a significant competitive advantage.

SMM and conversion counting

Reach, reactions and engagement is, of course, good. However, business is primarily interested in the number of sales. Most frequently asked question, which the client asks: “How many buyers will I get at the exit?” And this is the main mistake: social networks should be considered as another communication channel, as well as an image asset - SMM indirectly affects sales. 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 that are typical for SEO and contextual advertising.

The 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 individual statistics are kept for each URL passed through our short link generator, which allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of literally every post.

However, one should not expect an influx of visitors to the site earlier than 2-3 months after the start of active promotion of the community. Firstly, in principle, people 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 complete 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 a lot of widgets for receiving 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 reducing Cost Per Lead. As for this indicator, it is calculated according to the classical formula:

(total promotion costs)/(number of leads)

Here you should take into account 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 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 into the denominator. Considering how reluctant social media users are to click on external links, this is the most common approach.

To count or not to count?

If your eyes are already dizzy 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. Most best option- choose 5–10 the most suitable ones, starting from the tasks set, otherwise the lion's share of working time will have to be spent on tables and formulas. To make it easier for you to navigate, here is the standard report structure used by most marketing agencies.

SMM specialist's report on the results 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 you to estimate the share of a hot audience at the end of the sales funnel. When working on VKontakte, you should take into account the number of subscriptions to the newsletter through a special widget - this will help 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 ​​\u200b\u200bmust be achieved. The optimal numbers depend on many factors, including the subject, the nature of the target audience, the region (if there is a geo-referencing) 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 your data with industry peers, you'll be able to reliably gauge how justified your digital marketing efforts are.