“Social media” and “success” are words rarely uttered in the same sentence, unless there is a question mark included as well. Businesses might be able to relate tweets to clicks, clicks to purchases, and purchases to revenue. But for individuals looking to build respect and authority, what measures should be used?
Rather than look merely at the number of one’s connections, I prefer to take a more focused approach. Here are three ways you can measure social media success no matter the size of your network. Please let us know in the comments section – how do you track your social media progress?
Re-tweets per Page View (Blog)
New bloggers (including myself at times) tend to judge blogging success based on page views. The more readers the better, right? Maybe yes, maybe no. Common sense tells us that more articles on a site will equate to more total site visitors – and in turn, more visitors per new post. How then, can a blogger truly measure the success of new articles? One metric I calculate is “re-tweets per page view”.
Simply put – how many people read a particular article, and how many of those readers re-tweeted it? The beauty of this metric is that it works whether your article has 5 views or 5,000. For example, Mohammed Altaee’s guest article for my site,”15 Personal Branding Tasks You Can Do Everyday” has received 600 page views and 74 re-tweets (or, 1 retweet for every 8.1 page views). Measuring this post against others, I can easily determine that it was incredibly well received by my readers.
Twitter “Follower to List Ratio”
Inclusion within a Twitter list is probably the most sincere form of appreciation in the social media universe today. The fact that one of your followers enjoys your tweets enough to single you out and closely track your communication is no small gesture.
When Twitter lists first debuted, I surmised that a new metric would replace absolute follower count as the measure of a Tweeter’s worth – the “Follower to List” ratio. To calculate your ratio, simply divide your follower count by the number of lists you appear within. (At present, my ratio is 5,229 to 162, or, 36 to 1. What is yours?)
As Twitter lists have matured and become more prevalent, my stance remains the same. A high follower count is great, but even more important is the followers that care enough to include you within a specific list.
LinkedIn Profile Views
I often like to check the little-referenced “Who’s viewed my profile?” section of my LinkedIn profile page. In this section, LinkedIn identifies how many visitors have viewed your profile in the last X days, and identifies these visitors by name, title, and/or industry.
If you are looking for a job, the number of outside profile views you receive should be of utmost importance to you. Essentially, this figure signifies how much interest folks have to connect with, or learn more about, you. A low number might suggest that your profile is difficult to locate, or that you’ve failed to provide reason enough to seek you out. Make sure to snag a unique URL for your LinkedIn profile. Also, make certain your profile is stuffed with relevant keywords to help recruiters find you.
These are just a few of the metrics I use, but I want to hear from you: How do you measure social media success?
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Ryan Rancatore discusses social media and more at Personal Branding 101. Connect with Ryan on Twitter at @RyanRancatore, or on Linkedin.
Photo credit, Breakmould.
