Measuring Social Media Success
A social media management system (SMMS) is an online management tool that integrates various social media platforms into one dashboard. You can schedule messages, monitor metrics, view conversations, and allow multiple staff to work within the SMMS to manage workflow.
When choosing a SMMS, it is important to consider costs. SMMS vary from free to expensive. When choosing an SMMS, consider the following:
- Size of your organization (small, medium, or large)
- Optimal integration of all your social media platforms
- Your organizational budget
SMMS examples include HootSuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, and TweetDeck, and new ones keep popping up every day.
It is easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of data available via SMMS and other analytics sites. How can you start measuring your social media activity? By keeping it simple.
- Determine the frequency of your data collection (weekly or monthly).
- Do not collect more than seven data points per social media platform.
- Start small with manageable measures such as followers and mentions, plus an Excel Spreadsheet for keeping track.
- Ask questions such as, "What went wrong? What went right?"
- Provide recommendations for improvement for future social media efforts.
Beth Kanter describes the Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly Model of social media practice and measurement. Each level is a small but strategic step to becoming a networked and data-informed organization. The crawl, walk, run, fly hierarchy demonstrates that the process to becoming a data-informed organization takes time, but in the end helps an organization determine what type of measurement it is ready to implement.