Measuring and Optimizing Social Media for Success After The Facebook Algorithm Change

The Facebook algorithm change means that organic reach is on the decline, and I’m sure as a social marketer that you’re feeling a little anxious. The response is understandable, but don’t forget that impressions are only one one small measure of social marketing success. As many marketers know, your fan count doesn’t imply success. With algorithm changes slashing the number of individuals that see your campaign, you’ll need to redefine your metrics for success.

To understand performance, you need to measure KPIs across the entire consumer journey.

Here are a few tips on measuring and optimizing the effectiveness of your new digital strategy.

1) Optimize content across your networks

You already know that social content isn’t one-size-fits-all. Each network has a distinct set of conventions and behaviors, and requires a tailored approach. It follows, then, that the definition for success will be slightly different across Instagram, Pinterest, and other social networks.

You might find that it’s easy to build extensive reach on Instagram, while Twitter is ideal for engagement and word-of-mouth. And you’ll probably notice that Pinterest’s architecture makes it ideal for driving website traffic and commerce. Keep experimenting and tracking the impact on conversions and on-site activity, then make optimizations based on what works. Prioritize budget and resources for the networks and approaches that make the biggest impact on your business.

2) Extend the value of user-generated content

Design user generated content campaign across multiple networks. These campaigns allow you to curate videos, photos and tweets from consumers. Extend the value of this content by repurposing UGC for other channels.

For example, you might feature your customers sporting items from your spring collection on your homepage. Or you might feature a digital gallery of user photos at your brick-and-mortar store—prompting your brand’s in-person customers to interact with you through mobile and digital. Nothing encourages your fans to share your content like making them the stars of your campaigns. Extend the life of your UGC to generate more word of mouth.

3) Run targeted follow-up campaigns and measure impact

The value of social isn’t all about direct response. Leveraging what you’ve learned from social can improve performance across all your marketing programs.

Case in point: you already know that your social promotion participants are interested in your offers. By including retargeting pixels in your campaigns, you can serve them highly relevant advertising to drive more conversions.

Here’s another use case: capture email addresses as part of your social giveaway, and follow up with a targeted email offer. By serving messages to a segmented audience, you’ll increase response rate.

4) Make better business decisions with user interest data

There’s no better channel than social for getting fresh, relevant content about your target consumer. Mining and repurposing that data can help you make better decisions for all of your programs.

From social, you can learn about the kinds of content that your consumers find engaging and the subjects that your consumers love to talk about. You can use this knowledge to generate new campaign ideas and craft better ad copy — and even reevaluate your merchandising.

Remember, when it comes to social, reach is only one KPI. A truly effective digital strategy optimizes all stages of your buy cycle.

  This article was written for Business 2 Community by Kevin Bobowski.
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Author: Kevin Bobowski

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Kevin Bobowski is the Chief Marketing Officer of Act-On Software. Kevin is responsible for leading the company's  go-to-market strategy and pipeline marketing, and directs the teams responsible for developing highly integrated marketing-communications & content campaigns, and demand generation programs across the globe. … View full profile ›

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