Social media has turned out to be an unexpectedly effective marketing and branding medium. In search of more followers than your friends or business competitors, you lose the focus of your business priorities. You seek fame by having many Instagram followers and the most likes.
This might be an amazing thing for you and your business. You might be able to finally scare away your competitors. Unfortunately, your 15 seconds of fame will not be worth rejoicing at all. There are many other metrics that determine how well your business is doing. Missing these sinks your business performance and you might lose your job if you are the marketing or social media manager
The social shares, likes, retweets and followers do not provide vital information about the overall effectiveness of your efforts. This is because the shares might not be from your target customers, bots or people spreading spiteful messages about your brand.
The following metrics that provide nuanced understanding of your social efforts but are missed by using Instamacro include:
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Conversion Rates
This is the percentage of visitors/ customers that visit your site and do exactly what the content on your Instagram page directs. For example, visitors who sign up for your newsletter as requested. Conversion rates cannot be obtained if you rely on Instagram bots. You might have millions of followers but none have interest in your product. Aim for high conversion rates; at least 5%. The average is at around 3%. Followers who will actually visit your site and take part in listed activities or make online purchase matter of your product value.
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Brand Search Volume
Instamacro and other Instagram automated products give you many likes and followers but will they really visit your site/ go through your page? The answer is an almost certain NO. Few interested visitors exposed to your brand on social media are likely to look up the brand on a search engine. This is therefore an important metric because it gives information on potential customers/users of your product.
The most effective tools to measure your brand volume are Google Insights and Google Trends. These tools give insights on how you rank compared to your competitors. Mass traffic to your site indicates right search engine optimization for your content.
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Leads
Many social media followers may indicate high brand awareness but these numbers provide little information on your ability to win targeted leads to your site. Attribution programs like Convertro measure your market interactions, web page visits, and number of emails the visitor will open before placing an order.
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Bounce Rates
This relates to the number of visitors that frequent your site then leave immediately without opening other pages. A low percentage depicts a low bounce rate and is good for business. You probably have good products or high quality; engaging content. Higher rates, above 40% will tell you that you are not doing something right. Therefore, improvement is needed on your content, products or speed. The posters are appealing but your website content isn’t.
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Page Views
Increase in views on your Instagram page indicates that your content is good and unique visitors click through multiple times to engage.
The number of unique viewers visiting your page at a particular time, counted once also indicates good marketing content.
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Inbound Links
Your content ranks high on search engines if you get many high quality inbound links. This is, external links to your site that people find your content engaging enough to link to.
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What are they saying about your brand?
You are wrong in thinking that all publicity is good publicity. Someone posting negative sentiments about your products on Instagram can easily ruin your business. Having a personal touch and someone to handle such comments is crucial. Instamacro will definitely not give you this data.
Interpreting this data might be difficult at first and you might think not to gauge the metrics but it is indeed important. Google Analytics is a tool that will give you most of this information and you can customize it to give you the best results. This will help you and your team structure new and better optimization strategies and campaigns for higher returns on your investment.
Author Bio
Lindsey Roberts is an Author and Marketing Consultant. She discourages the use of Instamacro and other social media bots. Read more on this by visiting her blog.