As you probably know from past marketing experiences, social media marketing is an incredibly effective tool for building brand recognition and improving conversions. That being said, if you want to get the most out of your marketing efforts in relation to social media, you should be tracking these 10 metrics, starting now.

1. Brand Mention Volume

A study performed several years ago by GroupM shows that those who see a brand name on social media are 180 times more likely to search for that brand. The same statistics apply today, making this one of the most important metrics to monitor for social media. Both Google Insights and Google Trends are extremely effective tools for keeping tabs on this metric.

2. Share of Voice

Share of voice (SOV) is a measurement of your brand’s effectiveness in social advertising. An accurate measurement of your website’s SOV takes into account all industry advertisements on a certain platform and shows you the percentage of mentions that goes to your brand and the percentage that goes to your competitors.

In order to keep up with your competitors, keep a close eye on this data. The best way to monitor your social SOV is to use free tools (of which there are many) which track the conversations revolving around your brand. This metric may show up in a pie chart that shows how much of the conversation revolves around your company, and how much revolves around three or four of your biggest competitors.

3. Referral Traffic

How many people are visiting your website because they saw your brand on social media? Google Analytics has the answer. It evaluates the amount of referral traffic you’re getting on your website and lets you know when you need to be doing more.

4. Conversion Rates

Conversion rates indicate how many consumers followed your call to action by contacting you, making a purchase, or doing any other action you asked of them, and they are among the most important metrics to be monitoring. These rates, which can also be tracked on Google Analytics, tell you what you’re doing that’s getting people to respond to your marketing and what you need to improve.

5. Brand Connotation

Unfortunately, you won’t be receiving all good publicity for your brand. Keep a close eye on the conversations surrounding your brand to ensure you’re exuding a positive social image. Tools such as SocialMention and Meltwater can be very helpful for showing everything that consumers are saying about you, which can lead you to make very important improvements to your image.

6. Inbound Links

As you know, inbound links are great for driving page views and increasing traffic on both your website and your social media networks. Watch closely to see which links bring in the most traffic and the effectiveness of different deliveries.

7. Klout Score

Millions of people use Klout to measure social media engagement, and you should too. Your Klout score can measure the effectiveness of engagement with your followers and show you how you can improve your engagement strategies.

Klout is one of the most popular tools to measure your social media engagement, but it’s not the only one. Play around with both free and paid tools until you find the one that works for your company needs.

8. Audience Reach

To understand how far your brand has traveled and how much further it needs to go, monitor your audience reach. Audience reach, sometimes shortened to reach, is a term used to describe the potential size of your audience for a particular social media message. It encompasses those who see your social posts and those who have the opportunity to see them in the future.

Reach is usually defined on social media networks, such as Facebook, by the number of newsfeeds the post reaches. The best way to improve overall reach is to produce more shareable content. In comparison with other engagement metrics, understanding your potential reach can improve your overall engagement, which in turn widens your audience and drives conversions.

9. Audience Engagement

In order to reach the widest audience possible, you need continuous shares, comments, and approval from social followers. Keep tabs on how much your audience engages with your posts. Note the strategies that garnered triple digit shares and learn from the strategies that barely moved at all. Use that data to improve your future posts. If you aren’t receiving much engagement, you know that your content, your promotion strategy, your company engagement, or all of the above needs a change.

10. Social Activity-Profits Connection

When all is said and done, look at the big picture. Go beyond monitoring engagement, social shares, and brand mention volume, and take a look at how your social activity connects to your profits. The main reason you’re participating in this social campaign is to grow your sales, and your activity should at least give you enough profits to balance it out.

Combine social activity data with other data sets, such as your customer count since you began your social campaign. Look at how many customers have converted as a result of your social media efforts and how much revenue it has brought you. If these numbers are not at least equal, it’s time to reevaluate both your spending and your marketing strategies.

Conclusion

Success in social media is about much more than knowing the ins and outs of posting relevant content. It’s about learning from mistakes and finding opportunities to grow through levels of data and information, which is a daunting task.