Social media is the key to reaching untapped markets and engaging with other merchants and sellers for partnerships. Engaging with them lets them know the business exists. Posting on a regular basis makes them aware of the brand’s activity which encourages people to reach out get to know the product or service. When this happens, it’s a must to respond in time to convert curious visitors into customers. The positive customer experience with an online marketing agency is a form of engagement, a product of SMO.

Engagement: A Measure of Social Media Success

Engagement measures how much and how often users interact with the content on the brand’s social account. Each social platform has a metric measuring social media engagement.

Below is a breakdown of the different engagement touch points from the social platforms. Any form of sharing leverages engagement and amplifies its effects.

Facebook

Organic Likes

Paid Likes

Unlike

Mentions Impressions

Links Clicked

Reactions: The reaction button on a post enables users to share different reactions to the content – Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry.

Twitter

Replies: a user sends a tweet directly to a handle. Replies appear to the brand’s and user’s feed as well as the feeds of users following both handles

Favorites: a user approves or likes a tweet

Instagram

Likes

Hashtags

Followers Gained

Comments: proof that audiences resonate with a post

LinkedIn

Likes

Comments

Interactions: the number of times people have liked, commented on, or shared a post.

Engagement Rate: the number of interactions, clicks, and followers acquired divided by the number of impressions

Engagement metric highlights the success of social content. The number of clicks, likes, comments, and shares of individual posts are all part of the core engagement metrics. To maximize its value and make use of the date from each social platform, it helps to calculate the average daily response rates, response rate, and inbound messages over replies sent from day-to-day operations or within the selected date range. Knowing which social media engagement metrics to track generate accurate data to improve audience reach, social media performance, social media marketing.

However, social media engagement isn’t successful if the brand’s goal is to gain viewers and increase follower count without a proper content strategy. There’s still an extensive online community still unreached and untapped which a business can access through social media engagement. To balance its time between developing engagement efforts and building a content strategy, it can use tools to automate responses, manage discussions, schedule posts, and track engagement metrics. It’s critical to ensure each conversation with a customer resolves a problem and ends in satisfaction.

Ways To Utilize Social Media Engagement Metrics

With several social platforms to utilize, the brand must double its focus on how to encourage activity from different users. Targeting the metrics is the key to promote engagement.

There are several ways to enhance audience engagement to help target company goals. Below are some of the techniques to use the findings from social media engagement.

1. Gather a team to work on social media presence.

The company must have a team answering questions, responding to comments, and concerns to ensure full-customer engagement. The team must be ready to tackle incoming queries and equipped to supply information to all inquiring users.

A social media team must have:

• Content Creators – They come up with ideas to create and schedule content. They keep the brand active on social platforms by consistently filling the editorial calendar.
• Community Managers – They keep transactions on a positive note and maintain the situation and news about the brand positive.
• Public Relations (PR) – They handle brand exposure, partnerships and collaborations with customers, clients, and businesses.
• Sales – They provide specific content to drive engagement among specific parties.
• Support – They are members on standby yet always available in case problems and other glitches along the way.

2. Plan content based on data.

The metrics shows which post types and content gain much attention. It distinguishes the attract followers and which don’t.

3. Concentrate on a demographic.

Facebook Insights provides a breakdown of your audience. It shows the gender, age, and location of users engaging with the brand’s posts. The engagement metrics show the trend and movement of the audience and notify the brand to drive its marketing campaign towards the right market.

4. Gauge the success of marketing campaign and product launches.

Immersing in social media gives customers a chance to address their comments and feedback on the brand’s product and services.

5. Assess growth and performance.

Social media metrics quantify the performance of the business. Following the engagement, rate presents the rising popularity, growing community, and increasing conversion rate.

6. Discover brand enthusiasts and influencers

People who are always on the platform can boost the brand’s exposure through initiatives and projects.

Social media engagement takes the bulk of the work of SMO. When the business learns to treat likes, reactions, comments, and follower count as a form of communication with users; it gains access to audiences and potential customers on various social media platforms.

GIFs taken from Giphy

Icons by Raphael Silva

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Reasons for social media marketing gone wrong

1) Misaligned business goals and social strategies

Business goals are created at the start of the business operation. Now, the social strategies should be aligned with these wherein every activity occurring on the site should reflect the VMGOs (vision, mission, goals and objectives). Let’s say your business is a digital marketing agency. You cannot just sell the services on your Facebook page. You must also tell your target market what the benefits of using the social platform in building brand awareness, for instance, are. If you are publishing case studies and white papers, you might as well explore SlideShare and LinkedIn. Relevance is key here.

2) Impractical brand expectations

The impact of social media is profound and not necessarily miraculous. Social media have limitations, too, aside from its own response time, and 30,000 likes do not mean a popular brand either. With this, know that social media cannot transform your business in just two weeks or so despite investment lots of effort and even money. Realistic, data-backed expectations matter, so you won’t be disappointed in the end. Developing social strategies is not a separate activity. Think about the business objectives and work your way backward. Let the goals drive and direct the strategy.

3) Lack of social media understanding

Social media are not universal wherein what you do on Facebook you should also do on Twitter. Each platform is different from demographics of users to usage patterns. For example, about 85% of moms in the US use Facebook regularly and closely followed by Pinterest at 39%. This means if your business targets mothers, you should be on Facebook and Pinterest and not on Twitter, Google+ or Instagram. It also stands to reason that not because Twitter is working for your rival, it will also work for you. This is not always the case. Not all platforms will have a good fit with the nature and scope of your business. Don’t spread yourself too thin across all the platforms. Think of your core business and decide from there. Pick up to three relevant platforms and focus on them.

4) Employing the wrong talents

Strategies are only as good as those who implement them. This rings true even for social media strategies. You cannot just hire talents who are aware of how to tweet or update status almost every two hours. You should look for talents who know every nook and cranny of these platforms. Essentially, what they think they know is different what they should be aware of in reality. Look beyond the resume. Social media may be free, but you must invest in the right people or those individuals who are willing to align their individual goals with the goals of the brand as well as the goals of the social strategy.

Despite your best efforts, your brand may not reach its full potential because of flawed approaches. Don’t be victimized by your own inefficiency, digging your own pit to fall into. Also, understand that social strategies take time before concrete results are generated. Sometimes, things are really working out just fine, but you hardly notice them. Focus on knowledge-building to understand social media in a way that they will benefit your business. Steady growth means you are on the right track.

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