Your social media and website presence should be integrated with one another in order to continuously drive traffic to your website. The next step would then be to measure your efforts so you can improve. Here is a helpful guide. Google Analytics provides you with data to see where your website visitors come from and understand how they maneuver through your site.
If you don’t already have these, first, set up a HootSuite account (here). HootSuite is a social media management tool that allows you to post content to your company Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare and others from one place – the HootSuite dashboard. Then, set up Google Analytics (here).
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TIP: Your social media goals and objectives should always be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (S.M.A.R.T.). For example: “I want to increase website traffic by 15% in Q2, 100 Tweets a month will be dedicated to driving traffic to the website.”
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Here are some metrics you can gather and which metrics are best for your business:
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Facebook
Facebook offers the most comprehensive metrics for business pages. Go to the “Platform Insights” page to see a list of likes, reach, visits, posts, and people. “Total Reach” is the number of unique people who have seen any content associated with your Page, including ads. Post Reach shows the number of unique people who have seen your Page posts. “People engaged” is the number of people who clicked, Liked, commented on, or shared your Page posts! Finally, ever hear of paid vs. organic search? “Organic Likes” is the number of people who have Liked your Page not as a result of a Facebook Ad campaign.
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Twitter
While not as detailed as Facebook, Twitter offers its own analytics for all users on number of Tweets you’ve posted, number of people your Tweets have been seen by, number of people who have visited your profile, number of times your @username has been “mentioned” by others, number of followers and more. “Tweets Linking to you” is the number of Tweets attributed to you in Twitter Cards with URLs. “Engagement Rate” is the number of total link clicks, Retweets, favorites, and replies your Tweets receive divided by the number of impressions. Finally, “Link Clicks” is the number of times links within your Tweets were clicked.
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Google+
Google+ shows your total views, broken down by number of pageviews, post views and photo views. In the Engagement section, you will see metrics like: total actions, +1’s, comments and shares.
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LinkedIn
On your LinkedIn Company Page, click the “Analytics” tab to learn more about your posts’ performance and audience. “Impressions” is the number of times the update was shown to LinkedIn members, “clicks” is of course the number of clicks on your content, company name or logo, and the number of “interactions” (i.e. likes, comments and shares) is also important. “Engagement” is the number of interactions divided by number of impressions. Next, you will see information about your followers and how you compare to similar companies. Finally, you will see some metrics for your number of page views, unique visitors and visitor demographics. You can use the drop-down to see what seniority, industry, company size and function your visitors are coming from.
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NOTE: we are offering another “LinkedIn Power Formula for Sales & Marketing Success” seminar on October 22nd. LinkedIn is a great way to grow your brand and revenue. Registration for the event is now open and is limited to only 15 people. Click here for pricing and details.
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Tracking the true effectiveness of social media for your business goes beyond page views and visits. Know important metrics like: product sign ups, leads, downloads, and newsletter signups, will help you solidify the importance of social media for your business. Find your Google Analytics reports under the Reporting tab > Acquisition > Social.
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This blog was written by our staff writers. If you are looking for a solid inbound marketing strategy, contact us today for a free consultation, we are here to help! Follow @cogomojo on Twitter, the COGO Interactive Company Page on LinkedIn, and subscribe to our blog, for more tips and resources. Thank you for reading! Your support is very much appreciated.