{"id":2338,"date":"2019-07-21T13:38:38","date_gmt":"2019-07-21T11:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dazzlepop.net\/site\/?p=2338"},"modified":"2019-07-21T13:38:42","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T11:38:42","slug":"8-vital-social-listening-metrics-matched-to-business-kpis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dazzlepop.net\/site\/8-vital-social-listening-metrics-matched-to-business-kpis\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Vital social listening metrics matched to business KPIs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Social listening is one of the hottest\u00a0trends in digital marketing<\/a>\u00a0right now –\u00a0just look at this tweet during Social Media Week LA:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(if you\u2019re curious, the first theme was authenticity)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet at the same time, as is always the case with buzzwords, there\u2019s also a lot of mistrust and misconceptions around the process. What is social listening? How is it different from social media monitoring? And can it actually benefit your business in any meaningful way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a heap of educational resources which look at the value of social listening, and the many different ways it can benefit your marketing strategy – but it\u2019s not often that I see an article which explains how social listening data ties into a bigger picture – how it represents where your company currently stands and can impact your business strategy in the long run. So I\u2019ve decided to write that article myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post, I want to go over four common business KPIs, and showcase which social listening metrics tie into them, helping you achieve corresponding business objectives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Business KPI: Brand awareness<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

First off, let\u2019s talk about what ‘brand awareness’ actually is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In basic terms, brand awareness is the factor that measures how familiar your target audience is with your brand, and how likely they are to recognize it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be quite tricky to determine how recognizable your brand actually is, especially when you need to focus on a niche audience that lives in one country, or uses a certain social media platform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s where social listening comes to rescue. Social media is a great data source for determining how many people are familiar with your brand name, and a social listening tool is what will help you collect and analyze this insight. The following metrics will help you determine your brand awareness:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Metric: Number of mentions<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The most obvious metric to track to determine your brand awareness is the number of mentions. Seems quite straightforward – the more mentions you get, the more people talk about your brand. However, it\u2019s not as simple as it looks at first glance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not enough to count mentions that appear in your social profiles\u2019 notifications. The most valuable mentions to measure brand awareness are not only the @mentions people use when they are trying to contact your brand, but the references to your brand they make in conversations with other people, which often don\u2019t imply any involvement from brands. Of course, that doesn\u2019t mean that you shouldn’t get involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Furthermore, depending on your brand name, it might be abbreviated, misspelled, used in a completely unrelated context and so on, which makes the process of assessing brand awareness a tad more complicated. A social media monitoring tool with flexible nuanced settings and a Boolean search option like Awario<\/a>, Brandwatch<\/a>, or Talkwalker<\/a>, will help you make sure that you\u2019re measuring the brand awareness of the iPhone\u2019s maker, for example, not the fruit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All in all, the total number of mentions (tagged, untagged, variations and misspellings of your brand name) will give you a comprehensive picture of your brand awareness level, and how it changes over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Metric: Reach of mentions<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Mention volume is not the only data point that shows brand awareness, and in this case, reach might be even more useful. Reach shows how many people have actually seen your brand name. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important to note that there\u2019s no direct correlation between reach and the number of mentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, the more people talk about you, the more exposure you get, but not every mention is created equal, as some people have bigger social media audience than others. As such, it\u2019s only logical that a smaller number of mentions can have a bigger reach depending on who <\/em>mentions your brand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Metric: Share of voice<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

While the number of mentions and overall reach data can help you evaluate your social media performance, share of voice (SOV) enables you to put these metrics into more perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SOV shows you what part of your niche you take up, in comparison to your competitors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This metric doesn\u2019t just show you how your brand awareness is changing – and hopefully growing – but it also enables you to benchmark your own brand awareness rate against your rivals\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Business KPI: Conversion Rate<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Conversion is everyone\u2019s boss\u2019 favorite KPI – and the ultimate goal of every marketing strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s also and the most straightforward way to confirm that your strategic approach is working – however, the link between social listening metrics and buying your product is a bit less straightforward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are several metrics that can help you follow the path to conversion that starts on social media – but be mindful that this path might take a long time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Metric: Engagement<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The first metric that’s commonly tied to conversions is engagement. As noted above, the connection between engagement and conversion is not the most immediate – it\u2019s more like a staircase, the final step of which is conversion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The engagement metric covers a lot of different actions social media users can take, some of them are quicker to lead to a purchase and some are slower. That doesn\u2019t mean that some of them are not important to track, though.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what are these actions? Engagement is an umbrella term that encompasses likes, social shares, comments, follows, and direct messages. Although all of these interactions are grouped under one category, the motivations behind them are different.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A like can be interpreted as someone nodding in approval, or waving hello at you. A follow means that a user wants to stay in touch long-term. A social share is an endorsement, and a demonstration of trust. A reply or a direct message indicates willingness to start a conversation – thus, it\u2019s the biggest step to conversion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might be wondering how exactly an Instagram \u201clike\u201d leads to conversion. Well, this is only the first step of the staircase – social media expert Mark Schaefer<\/a> uses this picture to illustrate the path to conversion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One \u201clike\u201d probably won\u2019t lead to a purchase – even a hundred is unlikely to do so. However, if you manage to foster the relationship, and encourage more and more interaction from your followers over time, a \u201clike\u201d can turn into a reply, a reply into a DM, and a DM into a sale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engagement is the clearest indicator of the trust you build with your followers, and trust is what fuels conversions – however, there is a social listening metric that has a more direct connection to conversion rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Metric: The number of leads<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

While engagement data is a bit of a roundabout way to try and predict conversions, the number of leads on social media has a direct impact on your sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lead is usually defined as a potential buyer, so in regard to social, it could be anything from a new follower to an ad click, depending on a user\u2019s intent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the sake of this post we’ll limit social media leads to either:<\/p>\n\n\n\n