Measurement and Evaluation of Social Media

Measurement and evaluation are two of the most important things to consider when building your brand’s reputation on social media. Measurement focuses on designating specific amounts that reflect a change in specific objectives. These objectives need to be considered SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bond. If your objectives cannot be considered SMART, there is no real way to determine if you have met your objectives for your brand on social media. Evaluation, on the other hand, focuses on the assessment or value of certain actions in a campaign or strategy. Together, measurement and evaluation are the final steps anyone in social media must take before they provide any recommendations or changes to their social media plan, program or campaign. There is a specific framework for key areas to measure and evaluate in social media: objectives, inputs, activities, outputs, outtakes, outcomes and impact. These are some of the most important areas to consider in social media usage to determine whether or not your social media presence is accomplishing the goals of your brand. 

Just like any other area in social media, it is very important to develop a strategy for your measurement and evaluation of your social media usage. Having a specific to measure and evaluate social media can help social media professionals determine a variety of insights for their brand on social media. The first thing it does is help social media professionals become better informed about their key audiences. Once they understand their key audiences, social media professionals can better execute and create more effective content for these key audiences. A strong strategy for measurement and evaluation will also allow social media professionals to align content, stories and other social media updates to be executed at the right time, place and platform. Another key benefit of creating a strategy for measurement and evaluation is you will be able to make sure that your brand identifies more efficiently with key audiences, influencers, micro-influencers and discover new audiences to create relationships with. This is one of the most important benefits you can gain from a measurement and evaluation strategy because it helps you get the right information in front of the right groups of people, which in turn, will increase the reputation and prestige of your brand on social media.

 

Using metrics and key insights for the various social media platforms in one of the easiest and most effective way to measure and evaluate your content on social media. Through these insights and metrics, you can determine valuable statistics such as the cost per click (CPC), cost per impression (CPI), cost per action (CPA), cost per conversation (CPC) and cost per engagement (CPE). These are all paid metrics that you can take advantage of when deciding how you want to advertise your social media page. Utilizing these paid metrics can drastically increase your search engine optimization (SEO), which means more people will have a higher chance of discovering your brand on social media.