By now, most companies are aware that there is a discussion about their brand going on. They also know that they can track and monitor this discussion via a wide variety of tools such as Radian6, Techrigy’s SM2, Twitter Search, Twitalyzer, Social Mention, and many more. The question now is, “What should I pay attention to? Which metrics will actually tell me something about my business?”

Certainly not easy questions, but some trends have evolved that help indicate whether you’re effectively promoting your business online and if you’re being showcased in a positive light. Here are some metrics to watch regularly.

Overall number of mentions or volume: Watch this top-level metric for significant spikes or dips in mentions across all social media especially during major campaigns or events.

Brand mentions: This is social media monitoring 101. What’s the buzz surrounding your company name? A great place to start, but strive to expand beyond this basic metric (more on this below).

Most popular topics: Moving beyond basic brand mentions to specific product names, promotions, and campaigns. These should change on a regular basis and keep pace with your company’s activities.

Share of voice: A term used by SM2, which channels (blogs, microblogs, Facebook, video/photo sharing, etc.) generate the most discussion? How do these metrics match up with recent efforts to increase your Twitter or Facebook reach? Are you gaining traction in the Blogosphere?

Top competitors: Monitor your competitors’ buzz. Be as detailed in tracking their social media reach, as you are with your own. Build off of their success by learning of new channels for adoption.

Demographics: It’s possible to obtain a high-level picture of the gender and age of your audience. Depending on the tool you use, a measurement of contributors’ popularity or influence scores is attainable. This in particular provides a great opportunity to reach out to those that run high-traffic sites or have a large number of Twitter followers. Developing and maintaining content sharing, and cross-promotional strategies with these folks should be an ongoing goal.

Top advocates and detractors: As mentioned above, popularity and influence can be determined. Pair this with sentiment statistics (see some guidelines on sentiment from Radian6) and you have a picture of your cheerleaders and your saboteurs. Join forces with the supporters and reach out to the detractors to determine the cause of their frustration. Pay special attention to setting up automated alerts of negative comments by the influential.

Geography: Running promotions or releasing product in a particular region? Track local impact and target the influences in that region. Stay on top of customer support efforts and respond to those that are expressing concern.

Number of comments: Here’s an easy one to gauge the popularity of your blog. Track overall numbers as well as a ratio of posts to comments.

Number of social bookmarking actions: How many people bookmark your content and what sites/systems do they use? Find out which content resonates and continue to generate that content which encourages viral sharing. Tools such as ShareThis make this easy by providing usage statistics including most popular content and the channels most utilized.

RSS feed subscriptions: This is a healthy barometer of how interested your audience is in your blog. These are the folks that are devoted enough to be notified when you post new content. As you modify frequency, average post length or strategy, watch this metric closely. Run your feed through Feedburner (now a Google product) to maximize insight.

User reviews and average rating: If you run an ecommerce site, seriously consider adding this functionality if you haven’t already. Studies have shown that inclusion of customer reviews helps move product in addition to allowing you to keep your finger on the pulse of customer sentiment. Watch for negative reviews, but don’t jump into the conversation unless a review surfaces that is significantly damaging. Instead, contact the customer privately if possible to resolve the issue. Keep an eye on average rating per product and product category.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn performance: Each of these is complex enough to warrant entire books on the subject and beyond the scope of this post. Here are some resources to get you started:

• Facebook: The Missing Manual by E. Vander Veer
• Facebook for Dummies by Carolyn Abrams
• The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly
• Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time by Joel Comm
• See our previous post about Twitalizer
• How to Really Use LinkedIn by Jan Vermeiren
• I’m on LinkedIn–Now What??? by Jason Alba

Want to know who’s buzzing about you right now? Take advantage of the explosion of real-time search options:

• Twitter Search
  
• Scoopler
• Collecta
• Topsy
• Crowd-eye

A few best practices:

• Take benchmarks of your own efforts. Understand what changed and analyze the cause. Use this insight to set goals for the short, mid, and long term.
• Involve key stakeholders when it comes to the keywords you’ll be tracking and ensure they’re kept in the loop when reporting is generated. In addition to tracking obvious terms such as brand, promotions, and competitors by name, evolve your terms to include the categories your business operates in. Also monitor specific customer experiences such as quality, satisfaction, speed, and even anger to lead to actionable data.
• Setup real time alerts and have processes in place to respond accordingly. ReadWrite Web offers some options.

The amount of data that can be collected from social media is limitless. Use the above metrics as a starting point and a way to filter through the noise to track what matters.

Social Media, Web Analytics Blogging, Ecommerce, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Web Analytics