Hey, MK here! Welcome to another social media marketing Friday. Today we shall talk about metrics. Don’t be afraid, they’re just numbers. OK, sure numbers can be scary, I hated 7th grade math, myself- but how else are you supposed to figure out how your social media marketing program is doing?

You’ve jumped up on the Social Media bandwagon, so now you have to measure your Return on Investment (ROI), otherwise your boss will think you’re just goofing off on Facebook and Twitter instead of actually helping his bottom line.  That begs the question- what are the best metrics to analyze for your brand? Well, I recently came across this nifty article that may just help you out a bit:

http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/177448?utm_source=smt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Interaction is the key metric I use to gage how a brand is doing- based mostly on customer feedback, discussion and comments. It’s important to listen to what your customers and fans are saying and respond to create your own community. That said, I believe in the quality of feedback and interaction you’re getting, not quantity. After all, who cares if you got a ton of interactions from people who really don’t matter to your business? Well, yeah, you’d enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling, but not a lot else.

I also think it’s valuable to know WHERE your fans and customers are coming from- do you have a huge clickthru from Germany? Is all your feedback coming from people in China? You may want to think about that and use that data to cater towards your audience’s geographic location as well.

Please keep in mind that numbers don’t always tell a tale of truth. In other words, do not rely solely on your metrics. You may only have a few followers to begin with on a social network, but what you may not know is one of those followers may want to do business with you or may be an expert in their field and looking to you for advice. Again, quality of interactions count!