You have a great social media management tool and are starting to track results. Great. Now, how do you take those metrics and use them to your advantage?
You could invest in an expensive enterprise tool (which can do some amazing tricks) or, pull out a trusty Excel spreadsheet and get to measuring.
Once you start measuring, you can keep this sheet, update it monthly (or more frequently if you like) and compare your results — saving all the data in one easy place.
Sure, you can get more insights at the snap of a finger with fancy tools, but with a little attention and regular updates, you can have the same thing for a fraction of the cost.
What to track:
- Likes and Reactions — the number of likes a post gets. You can count this metric across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Reactions are a metric from Facebook that includes emoji engagements.
- Comments or Replies — how many you receive across Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. For Twitter you’ll look at replies.
- Shares – how many times someone shared your post. This is is a visible metric across Facebook and LinkedIn. I fill in the Retweet number here for Twitter.
- Followers — how many new people you gained over the past month.
- Messages — A Facebook metric counting how many people sent a private message.
Still wondering where to start? Check out my handy-dandy template for tracking month-to-month metrics. It includes conditional formatting on the totals that give you a quick view on goals.
Use the template? Let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions!