Social Media Terms to Understand and Embrace in 2017

It’s time to start delving into your analytics and making better decisions based on your data, if you’re not already doing so. As social media marketing becomes more competitive than ever, staying on top of your analytics will lead to more potential success for your business. While you may have realized the need to begin tracking your efforts in a more streamlined way, knowing where to start, and what metrics to focus on, can be easier said than done. Start with understanding and utilizing these top four analytics terms and you'll be well on your way.

1. Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

Your click-through-rate can be an important way to track if the audience is interested in your topics, headlines and summaries. Not getting clicks? Adjust your titles, add more dynamic summaries and meta tags and figure out how to better capture your reader. Improving your CTR may even be as simple as making your content more visually stimulating. Taking the time to add interesting photos that are related to your topic is just as important as the content itself. On the flip side, if you're noticing a high CTR, create content or ads that are related to the topics that are receiving the positive engagement and clicks. Chances are your audience is interested in that topic and a related topic could also be a good fit for advertising or posting.

2. Engagement Rate

Your engagement rate reflects the interactions your audience has with your posts and your content. Are they clicking on images? Liking, commenting and sharing? If the answer is yes, you're receiving high levels of engagement. Social media is all about engagement and building relationships with your franchise clients. When considering the engagement of posts, consider the number of impressions in contrast to those engagements. By taking a closer look at your engagement rate, you'll also be able to gauge how often you should be posting. Is your engagement rate falling when you post too much or after a certain time of day? Adjust your posting frequency to your engagement rate, so you don’t waste content or lose the interest of your audience.

3. Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

When comparing various social channels, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, looking at the CPC can help reveal where your money is best spent. Social media network ad spending worldwide is predicted to hit $35.98 billion in 2017. This shows the importance of social media advertising, that there is a lot of competition and as social media marketers we should be spending our money wisely. When used in combination with other metrics, such as engagement and CTR, you may find that you're willing to spend more per click for valuable clicks (such as actions, registrations and sign-ups) than you are for clicks that bounce off your landing page. In addition to helping you compare across your social media efforts, CPC will also help you predict and propose budget for future sponsored posts and social media advertising.

4. Conversion Rate

Although tracking traffic, engagement and cost is vital to measuring the success of your social media campaigns, your conversion rate is the most important metric. Understanding whether you're converting and driving registrations, demos and sales is key to success. Low conversion rates may require adjustments to offerings, pricing and more. Despite the information gathered from a poor or positive conversion rate, understanding what your audience does after they click or see your ad can be invaluable to your social media marketing efforts.

Taking the steps today to evaluate your social media efforts and utilizing a social media management tool for analytics reporting will help maximize your social media marketing budget and efforts.