It’s the dream scenario: one of your posts goes viral. The likes, shares and mentions come pouring in on all your social media channels. You can hardly contain yourself with all the engagement your brand is receiving. You’ve won the lottery! Now to sit back and cash in on your fame.
Except, nothing changes.
Your web traffic might see a small bump—or worse, none at all—but after that, it stabilizes. Before you know it, your engagement has halted to a crawl, as if no one remembers who you were. Social media is a harsh mistress, and she’s moved on to her next fling.
As it turns out, all that activity wasn’t the cash cow you were expecting because it didn’t directly translate into leads and sales.
How Do You Know Your Campaigns Are Working?
It might seem as though activity on social media is an accurate gauge of a campaign’s effectiveness, but that can’t be farther from the truth.
Our culture prioritizes popularity as a sign of success. It implies a correlation between the two concepts when in fact, there are none. Vanity metrics might boost your ego, but they won’t improve business. Just because people are engaging with you on your social media channels doesn’t mean they’re visiting your website or interested in your product or service. More often than not, what happens on social media stays on social media.
So how do you know if what you’re doing is working?
The three most important components to a campaign are goals, planning and results. Once you’ve defined your goal and how you plan to accomplish it, it’s imperative you establish how you’re going to measure the campaign’s success.
Before launching a campaign, determine which metrics provide measurable value depending on your goals and KPIs. Unless you’re trying to gain exposure, mentions, likes and follows are probably the least valuable number you can track. Focus instead on leads, web traffic and referrals. At the end of the campaign, see whether your efforts put more leads in your funnel or shortened the amount of time it took to close a sale.
What You Can Do To Fix a Campaign
Did your campaign have the impact you wanted? What can you do better? Chances are, your strategy could use some enhancements.
Always be mindful of your goals and the metrics you are using to track them. Just as a campaign relies on a goal to be successful, they also require benchmarks to track that success. If any measurements seem unnecessary or lacking in any way, make adjustments and try again. See if a new metric will provide you with the data you need before scrapping it or making major changes to the campaign. It’s easier to make a few careful tweaks than to start from scratch.
Watch Your Social Media Flourish with BlueArx’s Expert Touch
At BlueArx, we specialize in all things digital media and we want to see your business succeed. Not only do we have some of the brightest minds staying on top of the latest trends, but we also have all the right tools at our disposal. See how we can help you succeed today.
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