Social Media Metrics and Platypi Designs Inc. – Do they measure up?

Social Media Metrics?

TechTarget defines Social Media Metrics as “the use of data to gauge the impact of social media activity on a company’s revenue”.  The main goal of social media metrics is to determine the impact of social media on a company’s goals. There are many social media metric tools available now but which ones should you use? And when you use them do you know what they are used for? What are they measuring? How do they impact your company? I have discovered these questions to be quite confusing and I end up feeling unsure of even where to start when I think of measuring social media efforts.

Nichole Kelly of the Social Media Examiner strives to answer some of these questions in her post “4 Ways to Measure Social Media and its Impact on Your Brand”. Ms. Kelly defines brand awareness as “a measure of how recognizable your brand is to your target audience” and states that there are key areas to focus on including social media exposure, influence and engagement. Ms. Kelly provides a summary of what exactly each of these key areas measure and also what to look for in each of these key areas. Ms. Kelly also addresses the lead generation funnel.

Dominique Jackson authored a very informative post “All the Social Media Metrics that Matter” where he outlined analytics in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ and Google Analytics. I found this post very detailed including full explanations of the analytics and images were provided for each of the social media platforms to help illustrate the use of the metrics.

Platypi Designs Inc.

In an interview with Tanya Riemann of Platypi Designs Inc. she stated that Platypi Designs strives to “discover the untapped potential of law firm websites by using the science of website statistics and today’s design principles to guide key decisions about website design and online content strategy”. Platypi Designs offers a variety of services including website design, full website audits, and website maintenance packages. Platypi Designs also provides WordPress website security packages.  You can find Platypi Designs on a variety of social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

When I spoke to Tanya, I asked her specifically how Platypi Designs using social media metrics to enhance the organization’s performance goals of generating more clients. Tanya explained she uses several social media metrics tools and she also uses social media in a variety of different ways to measure progress toward the company’s goals. Tanya listed four key measures including: Google Analytics, Active Campaigns, Twitter and Google Alerts.

Google Analytics – Tanya stated she specifically looks at the traffic flow to know where to focus her efforts in social media.

Active Campaigns – Tanya described this as an email newsletter tool that helps to generate more presence to her audience but also then directs traffic to her website and blog. Tanya explained this tool also helps Platypi Designs stay in touch with their clients regularly.

Twitter – Using both Twitter metrics and the company’s twitter lists, Tanya is able to fine tune the lists to see what her audience is interested in and how to focus her social media efforts for relationship building with the potential and current clients of Platypi Designs. Tanya explained Platypi Designs has also used Twitter as a business tool to hire contractors as well as to increase clients.

Google Alerts – Platypi Designs uses Google alerts to stay apprised of what is current and to help generate blog posts. Platypi Designs can use Google alerts to measure the company’s choice of specific keywords to follow and track. Tanya stated that when a keyword is popular then it will influence the blog post content, however, when a keyword is not generating attention she will adjust the keywords and try new ones.

Lessons for Others

There are many available social media metrics tools to help organizations measure their specific performance goals. The key is to inform yourself of the tools and what they have to offer and then to decide which tools will assist the most with your company’s goals. In my interview with Tanya of Platypi Designs there were a few great takeaways for others:

1) Keep your measurement tools focused, it’s better to do a few of them well rather than have so many things going you cannot keep track;

2) Do not be afraid to go outside of the popular list of social media metric tools – your organization is unique and so should your measurement activities be so you can stay relevant to your specific goals;

3) See if you can use your social media metric tools to perform multiple goals/tasks in your business.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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