Marketing has evolved. So has the way Challenger Brands need to market themselves to stay competitive. And at the heart of every Challenger Brand strategy, there needs to sit a fully-integrated social media campaign.
The reality is that social media can become overwhelming to most Challenger Brands. The sheer volume and speed can become daunting to even the most seasoned marketing professionals.
To help you better understand the most critical data, we have put together the following dashboard of what we believe to be the top five social media elements you should measure on a regular basis, as we do for our clients as part of the advertising and marketing services we offer.
Social Media Volume
This is simply the total amount of mentions your brand receives over the course of a set time period. This is the most basic metric to see if your social media is generating the results you need and is trending in the right direction. At the minimum, this should be measured weekly. Google Alerts is a great and free tool to measure this data.
Brand Engagement
We believe that this is one of the most essential elements to track your SM effectiveness. Your goal is to generate as much positive brand engagement with the right people as possible. The more followers that are engaged with you, the more brand-loyal advocates you will have. You want to track the number of comments you have on your blog, the active discussions on LinkedIn, and the total re-tweets you receive during a set period.
Influencer Mentions
Every industry has key influencers. The more you can get them to mention or discuss your brand, the more “credible buzz” you will create. Make a list of the top 5 – 10 influencers in your industry and track how often these influencers mention you or your competitors. At the minimum, you want to be ahead of your competitors. If you are not, then you need to make this a priority of your social media strategy. TweetDeck is a good, free tool to monitor this.
On-line Sentiment
This simply refers to the positive and negative comments that your customers and prospects are making about your brand in the social media sphere. It’s critical that you monitor your sentiment, as well as your main competitors’, regularly. If the negative outweighs the positive in any way, you might need to re-evaluate your messaging strategy. An excellent, free tool to monitor sentiment is Social Mention.
Industry Comparison
A good way to gauge how you are doing is to compare yourself to your most relevant competitors. Take your top 2 – 3 competitors and compare likes, shares, re-tweets, conversations, number of posts, etc. This not only shows you how you are doing, but illustrates your strengths and weaknesses from a customer’s perspective. In fact, items one through four listed above should be measured against your main competitors regularly.
There are many other data points that should to be measured regularly and what you measure will depend on your specific strategies and objectives. We believe that the five we have outlined above should be on everyone’s basic dashboard.
