How to Define and Measure Social Media KPIs

How to Define Measure Social Media KPIs Part

Prologue

For the B2B brands quantifying the endeavors of their social media marketing endeavors ha always been an important pre-requisite to optimize their marketing endeavors. This is where defining & measuring the Social Media KPIs becomes paramount. According to Sproutsocial.com, 95% of the people aged 18-34 prefer to follow brands through social networks. To analyze whether social media efforts have the right impact on the target market, marketers need to define the vital Social Media KPIs & align it with the short & long-term business objectives of their brands. In the year 2019, data is the simple answer to every question & this is the a reason why strategies for defining & measuring the Social Media KPIs from the year 2019 onwards have to be orchestrated around the major data-points of relevance to the businesses so that not only the marketers can optimize their Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) but also the brands can optimize their sales conversions through the social channels. However, how to set the Social Media KPIs, remains the question that bothers the marketers. Marketers need to promptly plan their strategies for quantification of social metrics on diverse social platforms where their brands have a presence. Once the social media KPIs have been defined, marketers can start with periodic social media KPI reporting. Social Media KPI reporting template such as the one by Hootsuite can be used by marketers for reporting & optimizing their Social Media KPIs. In the previous 3 parts of the blogs created on Social Media KPIs, we discussed the vitality of defining & measuring the impactful Social KPIs for 2019 for the platforms such as Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. In the present blog, we comprehend how marketers can prioritize & refine their social media quantification strategies for LinkedIn. LinkedIn KPIs 94% of the B2B marketers on social media use LinkedIn to publish content & 91% of executives rate LinkedIn as their first choice for professionally relevant content. (Source: Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn). Moreover, 80% of the B2B leads generated on social media come through LinkedIn & 50% of the website traffic originating from social media comes through LinkedIn (Source: Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn). 45% of LinkedIn users are in upper management (Source: LinkedIn) & 2 professionals join LinkedIn every second. (Source: Statista). LinkedIn is pretty unique among all social media platforms because it is the only professional networking website. The people on LinkedIn range from fresher to professionals to pros in the field, who are always looking for unique solutions to their problems. Defining & quantifying the Social Media KPIs for LinkedIn is thus not only essential for the marketers to run successful LinkedIn campaigns but also suffices the purpose of omnichannel reputation management. Hence, targeting the prospective buyers on LinkedIn is not only simpler but also aligned with a greater Return on Investment (ROI) for the businesses. LinkedIn is unique as compared to Instagram & Twitter & hence, unique metrics are required to measure the efforts of LinkedIn advertising campaigns. Defining & aligning the Social Media KPIs of LinkedIn with the business objectives of the brands is thus essential for marketers. 1. Conversions: LinkedIn conversions are all about compelling the audiences on the social networking website to perform a desired set of actions. Just like other social media platforms, LinkedIn offers its advertisers a pixel that they can install on their websites. This pixel then can be used to measure the conversions through several advertising campaigns. Conversions are one of the most important aspects of quantification of Social Media KPIs. Leveraging Social Media KPI spreadsheets, the marketers can understand whether they are meeting their conversion goals through LinkedIn or not. Furthermore, the marketers can also understand what happens to the conversion through LinkedIn whether they are fashioned in a way to & finally culminate into sales conversions. 2. Cost per Conversion (CPC): The aim of an advertising campaign on LinkedIn doesn’t end with conversions but the fact that what the prospects do after getting converted also matters. The cost per conversion is the measure of the average amount of money invested in converting a prospect through the LinkedIn advertising campaigns. The Cost per Conversion should be lesser so that the ROI from the social media advertising can be optimized; however, at the same time, the conversions should also be quality conversions generated by proper ad placements & should culminate into sales. Even if running targeted campaigns might be slightly expensive, it will always generate better sales conversions in the end & thus will materialize higher ROI for the marketers. While architecting, this Social Media KPI, the marketers should keep in mind whether they are spending an ample amount of currency to optimize their omnichannel marketing endeavors. Competitive benchmarking may play an essential role in accomplishing this task. Investing the best pricing for marketing endeavors is paramount to optimize the sales revenue. 3. Leads Generated: It is the number of prospective customers that are acquired via LinkedIn advertising campaigns. Measuring the number of leads generated from LinkedIn can help in optimizing lead generation campaigns. These Social Media KPIs are a direct measurement of the number of potential customers acquired by the marketing endeavors on LinkedIn. Measuring the Social Media KPIs as a comprehensive part of LinkedIn Marketing Strategy in the year 2019 & beyond further helps in retargeting those potential customers across omnichannel. 4. Demographics: LinkedIn demographics measure the characteristics of people who are following brand pages, liking the content & are interacting with the ads on LinkedIn. The followers can be segmented based on country, region, job function, seniority, industry, company size & employment status, etc. With a segmentation of the potential clients, the marketers can run better-targeted ads to convert them & optimize their ROI. This Social Media KPI helps in visualizing what are the prime geographies fetching relevant traffic on the platform. Deep delving into the demographic insights of the prospects may help the marketers in brainstorming & deducing whether their traffic is essentially from their prime target geographies. It also helps them in actualizing the gender & ethnic groups taking more interest in their buying solutions & whether or not they are generating sufficient conversions on the website. 5. Good Quality Job Applications: Nowadays, companies receive lots of job applications because of their online presence. Hiring candidates through LinkedIn is a better practice than conventional interview-based hiring. The best -fit for the job express their interests & apply for the situations available. Not only the company gets a larger number of candidates to choose from but they also get a platform to showcase their culture & people ready to embrace it by being a part of the hiring process. All this is possible because of the online presence of the marketers on LinkedIn. The job seekers can apply for open positions either organically or through paid ads. Apart from establishing brand resonance defining & using the Quality Job Applications as a Social Media KPI, it helps people in embracing their culture which in turn is important to fuel their new product launches & to attract better influencers. 6. Cost per Acquisition (CPA): CPA is the average amount of money spent on acquiring a customer through the paid LinkedIn ad campaigns. In general, a lower CPA may be associated with a higher ROI. However, it can’t be generalized, as sometimes a lower CPA may not result in quality leads (depends on ad placement). Hence, it is important that not only the marketers acquire quality leads with minimum costs but also finally convert those leads into sales. Just like Cost per Conversion (CPC), this Social Media KPI should be architected after competitively & otherwise benchmarking the industry. 7. Video Views:  Just like other social media platforms, videos are a preferable form of content for the users on LinkedIn so much so that LinkedIn prioritizes videos to be shown in the newsfeed of audiences on Facebook. Videos generate a greater level of engagement & drive better conversions. Having a keystone video & native videos are great ways for marketers to showcase their products and services to attract & engage users on LinkedIn. This Social Media KPI gives deep insights into whether a niche-specific audience is being targeted or not. The average engagement time of the audiences with the Videos & the completion rate indicates whether the videos are impactful in conveying brands’ messages or not. 8. Page Views & Page Views/Visit: Page views measure the number of times a page has been viewed on LinkedIn. This metric can also be directly correlated with the increase in the number of brand followers on LinkedIn. Page Views/Visit is a matric that resonates with the number of unique visits on a page. This Social KPI is one of the most important indicators of the audiences’ engagement on the website & insights from the data can be used to optimize the Customers’ Experience (CX) Index. 9. Click-Through-Rate: This metric is an excellent way to measure the effectiveness of campaigns being run on LinkedIn. This metric is measured by dividing the total number of times an ad was served to a potential buyer i.e. impressions divided by the total number of clicks on that ad. If a percentage is desired, the fraction has to be multiplied by 100. CTR is a metric that can be directly correlated with the increased number of conversions through the LinkedIn ad campaigns. In general, higher CTR is a measure of prospects clicking on the advertisements being served, which in turn leads them to a landing page, where they might click on the call to action button & perform the desired set of actions to optimize the conversions through LinkedIn. However, merely generating LinkedIn conversions isn’t enough. The marketers have also to track what percentage of the total conversions, generated through LinkedIn traffic, culminates into sales (just like any other social media platform). CTRs are amongst the most conversant Social media KPIs when it comes to inferring whether the advertising campaigns are impactful enough for a good number of impressions to be served to & clicked by the prospective clients. 10. Comments: When it comes to marketing, especially within the B2B dominion, comments are imperative to engagement. The marketers who run Account-Based Marketing (ABM) campaigns would aim for the highest level of interaction with the prospects. Surely, likes & shares are useful but comments are much more impactful as they will come only from the prospects who genuinely care about the brand & their products or services. LinkedIn metrics need to be experimented with & the ones most crucial as per the business orientation of the brands need to be aligned with the bottom-line goal of brands i.e. to increase their revenue. As per the performance of the metrics on LinkedIn several campaigns can be personalized to best match the requirements of the audiences on LinkedIn. A/B testing the campaigns to reflect a healthy upsurge in the LinkedIn KPIs is a pre-requisite to optimize conversions through LinkedIn. This Social Media KPI is of special importance to the marketers as it provides a golden opportunity to the marketers as well as the social media managers to convey their brands’ messages through social campaigns. Comments also help brands in engaging with the influencers & with the existing customers to whom they can provide on the spot expert solution to their problems leveraging the comments displayed. Bringing It All Together In today’s era of omnichannel marketing & the Internet of Things (IoT), it’s not sufficient for brands to simply create a profile on social media & assume that simply creating the company page is going to aid their website traffic, causing the revenue to bolster. That’s the reason why defining & measuring Social Media KPIs is so crucial. By analyzing the data generated from the above Social Media KPIs, the brands can make wiser & intelligent decisions about how to enhance their future campaigns. When it comes to optimization of LinkedIn advertising strategies maintaining & monitoring a Social Media KPI dashboard can give a brand the much needed data-driven insights to competitively benchmark, improve & optimize the conversion through its LinkedIn page. We, at Valasys Media, employ an array of B2B services such as lead generation, account-based marketing, lead nurturing, event promotion services, list building services & content syndication services to help our clients optimize their core bottom line endeavors such as generating an improved sales ROI & in architecting a better Customer Experience (CX) Index & in fetching better returns on their marketing investments (ROMI). For deciphering the pathways to perennially healthy sales pipeline or for any help with the B2B endeavors aligned with the services being offered by us, get in touch with our team of experts.

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