Did you know what the number one activity on the web is?

It’s social media.

The problem is … social media is a beast – especially when you intend to leverage its power to market your business.

Whether you’re running a brand-level team with multiple networks, campaigns, and channels or just trying to keep your own personal brand above water … staying engaged, active and “topped off” is a constant struggle.

Add to this the need to not only monitor your social media analytics but also pull data-driven insights from your accounts to optimize critical elements like reach, posting schedules, influencers and (of course) ROI and “overwhelmed” doesn’t even begin to tell your story.

The good news is … you can conquer the social-media beast and enjoy the meat.

Today, we’re going to look at the five metrics that really matter and how to track and measure them easily by creating an all-in-one dashboard.

1.   Follows and Fans

Not to be crass, but on social media … what matters isn’t just the size of your audience, it’s what you do with them.

Naturally, two followers are better than one and ten thousand fans are definitely better than two.

In fact, bigger numbers beget bigger number. It’s kind of like the snowball effect: when potential followers and fans approach social media with the question, “Who should I ‘like’?” a large following serves as social proof that you’re trustworthy. Current followers and fans are also your greatest source for bringing in new followers and fans.

That’s why keeping track of your aggregate base is extremely important both at the big-picture level of raw numbers as well as the individual-level of influential members. By tracking both you can far more accurately plan content production (type, time and frequency), how and when to hold Twitter chats, feature product releases, guide PR, and generally understanding your customers.

However, tracking and measuring these numbers for effective growth isn’t always easy, especially if your social media is spread out across multiple platforms.

With an all-in-one dashboard, you are able to easily track these important metrics using tools such as Facebook Overview and Twitter Analytics. In addition, the Klout widget helps you measure your overall ranking on social media.

Such data helps you plan, organize and implement effective social media campaigns that bring significant growth to your business.

2.   Content

“You are the content you publish.” That’s Scoop.it’s slogan.

And it’s absolutely true.

The type of content that you put out there says a lot about your brand. It is therefore very important to make sure that anything that goes (or even hints to go) against your company’s policies, values and products does not see the light of your audience’s screen.

One way of ensuring you publish the most relevant content is by understanding the two most important metrics that go with content.

Buzz metrics (or “virality”) are social-sharing data as it relates to posts, likes, and retweets.

They help you know what’s being shared and where it’s most popular. However, buzz metrics are pretty easy to “doctor.” You could get an impression that will mislead you and jeopardize your entire marketing strategy. For this reason, it is important to compare different pieces of content from different sources. The best option is to combine buzz metrics with a deeper analysis: impact metrics.

Impact metrics are harder to find. Essentially, they tell you how well your content is performing – beyond likes and shares. These include backlinks, views, comments, downloads, and eventually even sales. Impact metrics give you a clearer and more accurate picture of what’s happening not only in your industry but with your own content.

The best way to track impact metrics are through funnels. You can add funnel visualization to Cyfe easily through widgets like Google Goals for online conversions or via your sales and customer support platforms like Salesforce.

3.   Demographics

While some demographic variables only apply to specific business types, it is fair to say that age, income, and location apply to almost all kinds of businesses. Also key is knowing what your followers are fans of.

The right demographic data will help you understand where your target market is, which platforms to use and if your current platforms are worth the effort. Demographics help you understand your customer not only so you know what to sell to them but also for the phase before that – customer engagement.

They’re equally vital after you complete the sale for customer retention.

Facebook’s Audience Insight gives you a wealth of information into the demographics of your audience including their age, sex and what they like. With such information, it’s much easier to budget for marketing on the platform.

But that’s just Facebook. You will want to know about Twitter, LinkedIn and other platforms you are using as well. This calls for third-party features and apps. But even then, you can spend a lot of time in between apps and platforms analyzing all the data you collect.

Again, instead of separating your demographic data, an all-in-one social media dashboard give you a holistic picture of all your platforms.

4.   Brand Exposure

As a marketer, it’s easy to lost in self-referential metrics. By that I mean exactly what we’ve just discussed: followers and fans, content, and demographics.

However, if all you do is track your own analytics … you’re only looking at a small part of social media.

To broaden your view means tracking how other people and organizations see you as well, which is where brand exposure comes in.

A simple way to do this is to create social site widgets within Cyfe that track and alert you whenever someone mentions your brand in a post.

Why is this so essential?

Because according to a recent report by Entrepreneur, “customers that are exposed to a brand on social media are 180 percent more likely to search for that brand on search engines.” In other words, tracking your brand mentions is vital not just to social media success but also your success on other marketing channels.

Having such information will help you leverage opportunities as soon as they arise as well as plan how to use social media to increase your brand awareness in the future.

5.   Hashtags & Keywords

Along with mentions — i.e., brand exposure — hashtags and keyword monitoring are non negotiable.

While somewhat numerical, keeping a close watch on the terms central to your products and services is far the more qualitative than quantitative. More than asking, “How many?” this final metric is about getting inside and behind the numbers. What topics are popular? What are people saying about those topics? What’s the emotional tone? What are the hot button issue?

By using hashtag and keyword-specific streams, you can monitor the topics that matter most by monitoring what people are actually saying. This is what’s known as “social listening” or “social sentiment.”

After acquiring this data, you can then use it to:

·       Interact with your audience more effectively.

·       Connect directly with influencers in your industry.

·       Acquire new leads by sharing and commenting on these posts.

·       Answer questions and solve common problems in your own products and services.

It can also help you craft your marketing copy itself by using your audience’s own words.

Simplified Social Media Analytics

All this sounds impressive, but where do you find all the time to keep an eye on your own metics, track what’s popular within your industry, comment and share, write your copy, and actually sell?

That’s why Cyfe’s all-in-one social media analytics dashboard dramatically simplifies the entire process. Here’s just one example of the kind of dashboard you can create:

The Facebook Overview widget shows your overall Reach, Page Views, Fans Engaged, Total Clicks and Total Likes. You also generate comparison reports to measure growth and engagement over time.

The Twitter Analytics widget shows the number of Tweets sent, new accounts followed, new followers, Lists, and total number of favorites (now Likes) over the last seven days.

The Facebook Demographics widget shows the demographic variables of your audience and how they are interacting with your page.

The LinkedIn Analytics widget shows you the total number of followers and how well you are performing by comparing current to previous periods.

Lastly, the Twitter Feed widget shows you the latest tweets in your industry, which you can duplicate to monitor brand mentions, hashtags, and keywords.

Best of all, you can bring all your social media analytics together starting today by jumping into Cyfe for free.