Lets face it – marketing team leaders don’t have time to stay on top of the inner workings of each team member’s daily performance. Managers need simplicity when it comes to reporting, not convoluted information in charts and presentations that change every month. Simplicity is key – and it’s even more important when reporting up to executive management.
So here’s a solution – The Automated Social Media Scorecard.
This format keeps track of your department’s most important social marketing KPIs in a simple and easy-to-understand way that executives love. The scorecard gathers all of your most important KPIs in one place and reports on team performance at a glance.
It is a simple reporting tool since it uses a color-coded percentage formula to provide an overview of departmental performance. The color-coded system also incites emotions and drives accountability when displayed for the entire team to see. This scorecard can be used to measure the effectiveness of nearly any social marketing strategy.
KPIs included
The KPIs included in the scorecard are the metrics that I use to judge the effectiveness of my social new curation strategy. These can obviously be modified and changed to fit your organization’s KPIs. The metrics in the downloadable sheet include:
- Follower Growth
- Shares
- Link Click-Throughs
- Referral Traffic
- Referral Conversions
- Publishing Volume
Percentage-based Formula: Actual / Goal
Start using the scorecard by setting goals each month for any given KPI. This requires some forecasting that may seem difficult at first, and may even feel like you’re throwing numbers at a wall! But a diligent forecasting process pushes managers to plan for success and keep a progressive outlook on the path ahead.
Start forecasting by analyzing what has worked in the past and how much value was generated. Decide if you are just trying to hold the line and maintain your place or grow and take new ground. These goals have implications on forecasting numbers growth, so plan accordingly.
Forecasting exercises result in detailed project planning and a realistic expectation about what your team should be capable of achieving.
Automated Color-Coded Monthly Scores
Each metric has one score per month as a percentage of actual versus the goal. Using a stoplight format – Green is good, Yellow is average and Red is bad performance. The scorecard comes with automated color-coding according to the following system:
Only one hundred percent or higher gets a solid green box. A score of ninety percent is solid yellow and varies more green as it rises closer to one hundred percent and turns more red as it lowers towards eighty percent. Finally, eighty percent and lower is solid red. Some might think this is too harsh, but I have seen managers set the red as high as eighty-nine percent!
Put in your forecast numbers with real and actual being equal. Keep the scorecard where the entire team can view it and don’t break the chain of green boxes.
Automated Trend lines
One other nice feature to have on any manager’s scorecard is a performance trend line. Trend lines add another dimension of information at a glance in a way that executive teams will find helpful and familiar.
The scorecard is set up to calculate these trend lines (also known as ‘Sparklines’ in Excel) automatically as you add data in going forward. Between the color coding and the trend lines, you will have everything needed to understand and communicate your team’s performance at a glance.
Use the automated Social Media Marketing Scorecard to project your goals, optimize your team’s performance, report to executives and hold everyone on your team accountable to organizational goals.