Social media, unlike traditional media is designed for interaction. The content publisher can instantly gauge both positive and negative reactions.  The intention of every piece of content published is to get your audience to interact or engage. Measuring how many interactions your post garners is, in my opinion, a core metric essential to measuring and monitoring. Interactions can be measured in two ways: Likes and Comments.

Measuring the number of ‘Likes’ your post garners is akin to measuring the ‘applause rate’ of your content and this helps you understand how well your content resonates with your audience. In the same vein, measuring the number of comments that your Facebook post receives will help you understand how well your audience is conversing with your brand. Remember, conversations are what makes social media ‘social’.

Tracking and monitoring the number of ‘Likes’ and ‘Comments’ on a weekly basis will enable you to gain deeper understanding of your audience. This in turn will help you create content that resonates better with your audience.

Increasing your post’s applause and conversation rate will also increase impressions and visibility as the popularity of the post trickles down Facebook’s social graph.

Amplification

The value that your content delivers with each post is the fuel that drives your fan growth rate.  How many times do your fans share your content with their network of friends? Measuring the ‘Shares’ count of each post helps you determine the ‘amplification rate’ of your content. Amplification enables you to reach the friends of your fans and thereby increases your reach and potentially your fan growth rate, but this requires your content to be packed with value that your fans think is worth sharing with their network.

By monitoring the Shares count of each post you can find a pattern and figure out which type of posts generate more Shares, and create content accordingly. Create content that your fans truly care about and do so with images and videos that stand out and appeal to your fan base as they scroll down their news feeds. With Facebook now auto-playing videos by default, you only have a few seconds to impress your fans and encourage them to share it.

Alternatively, you can measure the reach of your posts via the ‘insights’ section of your Facebook’s admin dashboard by clicking on the ‘reach’ option from the menu column on the left.  The chart gives a day by day analysis of the reach of your posts. You can also export the data to an excel sheet for further in-depth analysis.

Conversions

All the metrics above (likes, comments & shares) are meaningless if it can’t add to the bottom-line, that is, convert your Facebook fan into a customer. Measuring how your efforts on Facebook drive conversions will help you answer the ROI question. These conversions may be a purchase of a product on your website or a sign up for a free trial of your SaaS product, or an e-book download,etc.

Installing a Google Analytics code to your website or landing page will help you track the amount of traffic from Facebook posts and how many conversions came out of it. Google Analytics will help you track the posts that drives more traffic and conversions. You can also assign a goal value for each conversion which will help you determine the economic value of each conversions.

All the above strategies used to improve the applause, conversation and amplification metrics should help in converting a fan into customer (or a lead) – From posting content that resonates with your audience and drives conversations, to delivering value in every post that creates trust and visibility.

With these strategies done right on a consistent basis, you will find your fans ready to become your customers when you finally pitch your product or service.

Bonus Tip

While these metrics might seem simple enough to track and measure, you risk the chance of flying blind when you don’t measure these metrics in the context of your competitors. How many Likes and Comments did your competitors’ posts garner compared to yours in the last month? What is the average amplification rate for brands in your industry?  To find answers to questions like these you need to compare your metrics with your competitors’ and find out your brand’s true performance on Facebook.

We, at Unmetric, have made it easy for you to analyze your own brand and your competitors, in ways that are contextually relevant and break through the walled gardens of individual social networks. The Unmetric platform indexes metrics across all major social channels for more than 35,000 brands. Uncover insights on what worked for you and your competitors, to help you plan future content and social campaigns.