Ever heard the saying “more is better?” Of course, you have. This is true in many areas of life (money, time, etc), but not necessarily when it
comes to marketing. Think about your Facebook page, for example. You may have 30,000 likes, but how many people are actually seeing your posts and engaging with them? Chew on that while we cover a few metrics you don’t need to track, and offer alternative suggestions.
Facebook Likes. Watching your like count increase can be exciting, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that people are seeing your posts in their timelines. Facebook is constantly tweaking its algorithm to provide what it thinks is the optimal mix of posts to you, the end user. Instead, measure the amount of interaction (likes, comments, and shares) you get on each post, and try a mix of different posts (links, stories, photos, etc), to see what works best for your audience.
Email Open Rate. This is basically the number of people who clicked on the subject line of your email and read the content inside. While this may seem like a good metric to track, it can be misleading. An “open” is counted when images load in the email, so what happens if an email client doesn’t allow images to load by default, or someone gets the text-only version of the email? Those aren’t counted in the overall open rate. Instead, a better metric to track is the click-through rate. This is the number of people who actually click on links in your email, and allows you to see who’s actually interested in engaging with your content.
Twitter Followers. Along the same lines of Facebook, Twitter followers don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. Brand mentions of your username (either in @ or hashtag format), as well as retweets and engagement are more important. Brand mentions allow you to see who’s talking about your business, while retweets are a litmus test for content quality. If one of your tweets gets a number of retweets, it means that your followers felt it was relevant enough to re-share to their followers, and so on. If your followers are engaging you in conversation, it shows that they care enough about your brand to talk to you. Think about the Twitter timelines you see that are nothing but link after link to their website. Not exactly good conversation material, right?
Do you have further questions about what metrics to track in your web marketing efforts, or how to improve your web marketing ROI? Contact us. We can help you make sense of the data!
GTECH Designs is a Baltimore-based web marketing firm that is committed to helping impact-makers spend more time doing good. For more information, contact us at 410-775-4100, email us at [email protected], or visit our website at www.gtechdesigns.com.
