With the explosive growth of social media, we are pleased to share some of the features and tools for measurement that are now available, and extremely useful. This section will identify those tools for each of the top platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn), as well as social bookmarking and monitoring tools independent of platform.
If you are interested in measuring other aspects of your marketing program, check out the other blogs in our measuring marketing series including traditional measures and Internet measures.
Event though Twitter does not offer any significant metrics, there are still ways to track engagement. The most obvious metrics is ‘Followers’ which defines how many people are viewing information that you Tweet. Another important metric to understand is influence in the Twittersphere. For example, the We Follow directory rates influence for specific keyword(s). Twitter profiles gain credibility based on the amount of Tweets written, the amounts of times Retweeted (RT), or the amount of times listed by other users.
The effectives of any Tweet can be measured in two ways; 1) the amount of times a Tweet is Retweeted, 2) link click-through rates. Klout is a free service that will rank your Twitter profile based off several criteria.
While Twitter does not offer a dashboard, TweetDeck and HootSuite are applications that help manage your Twitter profiles and provide dashboards with some metrics.
Facebook has made great strides to become more business friendly. Facebook has extensive built in metrics, called INSIGHTS. The amount of ‘Likes’ a given business page has on Facebook is one important measure. Total ‘Likes’ give a glimpse of how popular a page has become over time. Facebook INSIGHTS also shows the number of interactions within a Facebook page. The peaks in interactions can be linked to content generated which induced an individual to Like the page. Demographic information is also collected by Facebook INSIGHTS to identify who is interacting with a fan page.
YouTube
All YouTube pages include a profile with total channel views and upload views, launch (join) date, and subscribers. Similar to Facebook, YouTube has an impressive metrics system called YouTube Analytics. The dashboard includes total views of all videos on your channel, as well as percentages of views. YouTube Analytics also provide demographics including age, gender, geographic location, and more. Analytics also tell you which search terms on YouTube or Google led the user to your video.
One way to measure your LinkedIn network is your amount of connections. LinkedIn displays how many 1st degree, 2nd degree, and 3rd degree connections you have. The level of connections at each degree exponentially increases based on the strength of your network.
As with Twitter, LinkedIn can be strengthened by the use of link shortening. Using a tool such as, bitly will shorten the horrendous look of a long link, while providing click-through metrics. LinkedIn offers a minimal amount of metrics for your company page. It allows you to measure how many page visitors you’ve had click on products or services and LinkedIn members following your company.
Other Social Media Measurement Tools
Besides the measurement features of top social platforms, there are a number of social monitoring tools available. Radian6 is just one example of such a monitoring tools, and is one of the most friendly and powerful. Radian6 allows monitoring of the Internet and any posts that are going on about a topic, brand, or company. This tool shows exact posts instead of just a numerical overview of engagement. The ability to track how many posts are going on about your brand or keyword topics is a powerful glimpse into why social media is the future of marketing.
Another monitoring tool that is important to your marketing efforts is Google Alerts. This tool is so powerful; yet simple enough that anyone can be alerted via email when Google finds a topic of his or her choice. Alerts can be for a single keyword, or combination of keywords. This is a free tool that can be combined with all of the above metrics to completely grasp the posts and interactions revolving around your brand, company, or keyword topics on the Internet.
Check out the other blogs in our Measuring Marketing Series:
Measuring Marketing: Traditional Measures
Measuring Marketing: Internet Measures
How do you measure the results of your social media efforts? Let us know in the comment box below and share this post using the social bookmarking tools below!
