Tweet
You (or someone in your team or maybe even EVERYONE in your team) probably spend a lot of time keeping your social media pages up to date. There might be times when you wonder if it’s all actually doing anything for your practice. Maybe it’s about time to actually measure success?
Tracking a few metrics month on month allows you to measure progress and identify ways to improve. The key is tracking – record month on month, or week on week and perhaps even set some targets. Here are a few hints on what you might want to track.
1. New followers or fans
It’s easy to get fixated on how many fans you have on social but probably as important is how many new fans you have acquired in each time frame. As well as new fans overall you can also see how many people have ‘unfollowed’. So a very successful post could have been negated by a post that offended people and looking at overall statistics could mask that. Apps like ‘who unfollowed me’ are useful to find out more about your Twitter account and Facebook Insights on business pages provides information about the number of ‘unlikes’.
2. Reach
Everyone wants their post to be seen by lots of people. There are lots of factors that can affect reach – including the type of content, the popularity of the content and even the time the content was posted. Keep an eye on the posts that perform the best and try and figure out what made them popular. As well as posts showing fluffy puppies, think about creating what is called ‘evergreen’ informative content that doesn’t date and can be shared over a longer time frame.
3. Engagement
Your reach isn’t just affected by your actions; how people react to your posts will affect reach too. Think about this when creating your content. Why would people want to share it? Is your post useful, alerting people to pet diseases in their areas or does it provide great tips that other pet owners could benefit from? Make sure that if it is shared it’s also clear that it originated from your practice by including your logo on a photo or a link back to your website. Engagement rate per tweet or post is available within Twitter Analytics and Facebook Insights respectively.
4. Clicks through to your website
Don’t underestimate the power of social media to drive traffic to your website. Think about creating a few quality posts each month on a service you want to promote. Create a blog article on your website and Facebook posts and tweets introducing a few key facts with a link through to read more. If you are feeling ambitious you could create a tracking link that then shows you (in Google Analytics) how people interact with your website.
Include a call to action – book appointment or call us now – to encourage people to act. If you have any allocated advertising spend consider boosting these posts to ensure they are seen. Note your click through rate (logging in to a link shortening app is a good way to ensure these are recorded) and you will be able to see how many people have reacted positively and could therefore result in additional income.