The Importance of Social Media Tracking

Given the explosive and sustained growth of social media, implementing a social media tracking strategy is critical for any business hoping to drive leads and conversions. Even within the business-to-business space, social media remains a vital tool for gaining insight into customer needs, challenges and the purchase decision-making process. By using tracking to keep tabs on both the high and low-level activity throughout a social media campaign, firms can identify their brand loyalists, understand the factors most important to customers and guide future social media actions.

Why Social Media Tracking Matters

Social media is both an art and a science. Businesses can't rely on simply posting content and waiting to see what happens. Continual measurement and social reporting are the keys to reaping the most value from your social efforts. Here are a few ways tracking can bolster your social campaigns:

• Gauging Individual Campaign Performance: Social media tracking is the most accurate and efficient method of measuring the performance of individual social media marketing initiatives. Tracking allows your firm to quantify the success of each campaign and help determine which are the most important in driving leads. Metrics yielded from proper tracking also provide insight into which platforms are most effective at reaching your customers. If you are generating significantly more leads from LinkedIn rather than Facebook, you should allocate more resources and content accordingly.
• Rewarding Your Loyal Followers: Use tracking to identify influencers and prospects that consistently engage with your brand to help build your organization's social media community. This information will inform highly targeted, personalized promotions that humanize your brand. A brand that listens to and interacts with its customers effectively will enjoy better lead generation and conversion rates.
• Encouraging Experimentation: Social media is constantly evolving. New platforms continue to crop up with their own communities and engagement best practices, while existing platforms constantly roll out new functionality. Social media tracking allows your firm to land on its feet, learning and thriving in this shifting social media landscape. With a solid understanding of what content works where, when and for whom, your company gives itself room to play with the latest tools.
• Keeping Your Strategy Fresh: Use tracking to identify what’s working for your brand and what isn’t. Certain engagement tactics will be more successful in some communities than others, and what was once successful may change as time passes and your audiences change. Rather than wasting valuable time and resources repeating the same ineffective strategies, tracking can help your brand identify the most effective steps to take for each campaign.

How to Get Started with Social Media Tracking

At Walker Sands, we have years of experience helping organizations find value in their social media engagements. We combine proactive development and maintenance of social media profiles with the creation of content for blogs and social media tailored specifically to target audiences. This increases site traffic, lead generation and conversions.

We combine this approach with detailed social media tracking to continually improve your business’s strategy and stay abreast of rising trends and opportunities. To find out more about how Walker Sands can help your business develop and implement successful social media campaigns, give us a call today at (312) 235-6173.