How Marketing Like Netflix Will Save Your Lead-Gen Strategy

Webinars are an incredibly popular lead-gen tool in most marketers’ toolkits. However, times have changed (and viewer attention spans have changed with it). Rather than try and force your audience to show up on time for live events and stay for a full hour (ain’t nobody got time for that), it's time to consider delivering content they can watch anytime they want (just like their Netflix experience). We're talking on-demand video.

Now I know “on-demand” is an all-the-rage word as of late, but I really mean it. When is the last time you showed up for a live event or watched a television show on time? Can you even remember? I can’t. (Except for that time I bought expensive tickets to Wicked.) Now you can bet I’m showing up on time for that, because I paid for it. But if it’s free, my pulled-in-one-million-directions brain is going to forgo the things that aren’t urgent (or costly) – which means all those webinars I signed up for are lost conversions for the marketers who run them.

By thinking and delivering on-demand content like Netflix, the power is put in the hands of your audience to consume on their time – giving the audience edu-taining content to watch when they feel like it and giving us the ability to collect more leads and product sign ups than demanding live events.

Webinars vs. on-demand content

Now as a marketer at Unbounce, I also realize that webinars are a very powerful and well-used channel. Webinars were our bread and butter for a long time, as they are for many other marketing teams, but the shift in attention spans and the way marketers consume content (both professionally and personally) means that we tried to adapt our video content with it and saw great results when we launched The Landing Page Sessions in 2015.

We bounced around the idea of producing pre-recorded videos for our audience, which we saw as having a few benefits over webinars:

• They give you more time to focus on high production value and fancy video editing
• They allow the presenter to talk on-screen directly to the audience, as opposed to (less human) full-screen webinar slides
• They relieve much of the stress caused by technical glitches associated with live webinars
• They’re a great way to focus on showcasing your product with explainer videos and demos – showing spectators why they should buy your product
• They have the potential to bring in leads and product signups for months without much active effort after the initial launch. No more breaking your back only to rely on the ROI of a very specific time slot

After all was said and done, this one series with 12 episodes has become an ongoing source of leads for us and brought in 87% more product signups than our webinars over the course of four months. Can I get a “heck yeah!”?!

The Landing Page Sessions was built with the goal of showcasing our product, Unbounce, in a way that was valuable to viewers and great for explaining the use of landing pages. During each episode of LPS, Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner breaks down a full marketing campaign from start to finish and all the videos live on their own microsite where they can be accessed all day, every day.

This is a big change from traditional webinars which, as you probably know, include registering for a live event that largely entails 1–3 people chatting over a slide deck for about 30–45 minutes. Not exactly entertaining, but some companies pull them off really well. The problem for us was that while our webinars were well-produced, they had a declining registration rate and, subsequently, attendance rate. As you can imagine, this also lead to a declining amount of leads and product sign ups. The shift to on-demand content was intimidating, but we were pleasantly surprised. There is more work up front with pre-recorded content, but then it lives forever and you can drive as much or as little traffic to it as you want. Let’s break down some of the key benefits of using on-demand content over webinars.

3 benefits of on-demand content

1. Avoid technical snafus that go into running a live event.

A big win from switching over to on-demand content is that we avoid the technical snafus that can often happen in live content. With pre-recorded content you don’t have to worry about GoToWebinar going down, mics going amiss, ill-fitting slides, or power outages.

I used to run webinars at Unbounce when I first started, and I can’t tell you how many near-heart attacks I almost had because of the technical glitches with live events. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

We used pre-recorded video hosted with Wistia, and aside from avoiding live technical glitches, we were also able to optimize our video as we saw fit without the pressure of only getting one go at it. We would adjust our turnstiles and call-to-actions based on real-time stats, like average watch time and which of the episodes were most frequently clicked on.

2. Create more areas for conversion opportunities (turnstiles, overlays, and demo requests, oh my!).

And speaking of optimization, on-demand video also gives you the ability to create a ton of opportunity for conversions that's otherwise pretty limited with live events (because you only capture when you collect registrations). There are sometimes opportunities post-webinar, but at Unbounce we’ve seen a pattern emerge: most people don’t convert after watching. They often sign up to get the recording but don’t end up watching that either, so whatever post-work you do can often be fruitless. Bummer.

With LPS we capture leads through many different avenues, including:

• Wistia (lead-generating) turnstiles on each individual episode;
  
• An exit overlay on the homepage of the show to remind people to sign up for new episode notifications;
  
• A landing page where we collected submissions (to be featured on the show) before, during and after the season went live;
  
• and through a call-to-action to start a free trial of Unbounce at the end of every episode. 
  

These were all things we couldn’t have done (or done very well) with live shows before, because there just wasn’t room. And if we were putting all this effort into running a show, why shouldn’t we see a good return on it?

Now, with all this space for opportunity to convert, you still have to be careful you’re not being a marketing jerk. It’s easy to overwhelm the viewer, and we experienced that first hand because we were a little “conversion-happy.” Remember that there are people on the other end trying to watch your awesome content, so try and place your calls-to-action strategically so they aren’t overwhelmed, and then subsequently bounce. So play it cool, folks, but take advantage of all the room for activities!

3. Create content with higher production value (even if the costs are relatively the same!) that people want to watch

And finally, your production value can be a lot higher (even with a budget that’s the same as what you were running webinars with).

Here are a few takeaways about how to build your own high-quality, on-demand production without it feeling daunting:

The draw of webinars are not after they’ve happened, it’s during (as much as we’d like to believe our webinar recordings provide a ton of value, the fact of the matter is that they often don’t). Take what you know people like about those webinars and build that into your pre-recorded productions! If you’ve run a webinar, for example, where people really liked when a guest dissected email copy, create a short series around that topic.

Listen to your audience and ask them questions about what they’d like to see, then do it.Crowdsourcing is definitely underutilized, and sometimes as marketers we can over-complicate a situation. The easiest thing to do when deciding on new marketing channels is to ask the opinion of those who already love you. I learned this when I sent an email last year just asking “What do you need to get more out of landing pages?”, rather than assuming I knew what everyone’s issue or need was. And the result? I found myself a little surprised by some of the answers, and I was able to craft that into some stories for the show.

Create a production schedule and stick to it. Nothing is worse than putting more effort in than necessary for little to no return (this is the danger of on-demand content, and I get asked this a lot: "When are you done?"). Giving yourself a schedule allows you to build better productions without perfecting them until the end of time. For the landing page sessions, it took us about 3–4 months to build, promote, and release the season, for example.

And finally, a pro-tip: If you’ve got something to show off, do it! Showcase your product! Pre-recorded video is a great way to do that without having the pressure of a live demo.

A new era of content production

All this means that you can get more conversions with on-demand video because it puts the user first. On-demand video lets the consumer watch what they want and when they want – and that’s the whole point, folks. People who watch on their own time are more likely to convert because they’ve taken a vested interest in seeking out (or saving your content) to watch at a time that suits them best. This means they're already in a position to find more value in what you’re serving up, and reduce friction to converting. So you can create a high-quality production that takes the stress out of those live events and serves up highly relevant calls-to-action for highly motivated watchers. A match made in marketing heaven!

Wanna know a little more about our results?

Crunch the numbers

Compared to Unbounce webinars that were run over the same four months that The Landing Page Sessions was running, the landing page sessions had 41 more product sign-ups than the approximate 4 webinars we ran at the same time (47 product sign ups vs. 88 product sign ups). The Landing Page Sessions also brought in close to 2500 leads in that four months as well (which blew what webinars would usually bring in out of the water). Initial effort was higher for LPS, so that needs to be taken into account, but webinars are not consistent in their results month-to-month, either.

This really highlighted a point that Wistia preaches – people like to watch a video before they buy a product. We showcased Unbounce and made it clear how landing pages can be valuable for anyone’s marketing campaigns by breaking them down and seeing how all the pieces drive to them for optimal conversions.

My learning: Running continual seasons of LPS (now that we’re off the ground) will be more valuable and less effort in the long run than running monthly webinars, based on the combined effort and return on investment.

Additionally, because this content is pre-recorded, we have a ton of ability to milk it for all it’s worth and give it life even months after it’s debuted.

Optimize, optimize, optimize!

On-demand content can live forever. This means you can continue to drive conversions much longer than a traditional live production recording. The conversion opportunities aren’t limited just to where you can add more, but the time period in which you find them!

Things we’ve tried to do with LPS that you can try too include:

• Continuing to drive traffic to your page and build social hype – leads beget more leads!
• Using some paid traffic (Outbrain/Taboola) if you have budget to attract fresh users (but be targeted about it). You want the new watchers to be just as interested as your current audience.
• If you collect emails, create a nurture campaign to talk to those people based on their interests and needs. Continue serving them relevant content, like an ebook or bonus episodes if you’ve got more footage!
• Using social share buttons throughout your video (or on the landing page that it’s hosted on) with relevant and unique hashtags. If people like what they’re watching, they’ll share and drive more traffic back to your site through their own social channels.
• We keep our submissions page for the show live all the time to encourage people to submit pages for critique 24/7. And we still get submissions daily even though we haven’t finished our second season yet. This is great because it continues to list-build if you do a show where you can crowdsource content, and you can talk to them so they don’t go cold before the next show.

And don’t forget to keep an eye on it! If you notice that there are opportunities for improvement with what you’ve got right now, test them out. There’s an ease for testing with on-demand content because you aren’t pressured by a live time box. Things we’ve tried with LPS include gating specific high-traffic episodes, driving more traffic to a high-performing episode through specific paid channels that have done really well, and using The Landing Page Sessions as a nurture tactic for nurturing our subscribers into qualified leads.

So when’s the next episode?

We are going to be working on a season 2 this quarter and are experimenting with things like:

• Releasing all the episodes at once instead of dripping week over week (this will reduce effort on production/promotion and satisfy the binge-watch culture of our consumers, while letting us sit back and relax)
• Creating a version of LPS specifically for customers (ungated and used to create some evangelism in our community)
• Optimize the request-a-demo portion of the site and ensure a smoother episode-to-Unbounce journey

So remember, don’t be afraid of trying out on-demand content in a webinar-soaked world. It can actually generate some long-lasting conversion channels with a higher production value and less effort. If you’re interested in doing some on-demand content, take a gander at what we put together at unbounce.com/lp-sessions.

Take a page out of Netflix’s playbook and provide your users with timely content they can consume at their leisure, and watch the relationship bloom between your audience and your product. Now is the time to binge watch everything from cat videos on Youtube to your favorite marketing Podcasts, so don’t wait for anybody to register to give them what they need.

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Content Shock: Why content marketing is not a sustainable strategy

By Mark Schaefer

This post will demonstrate in simple economic terms why content marketing — the hottest marketing trend around — may not be a sustainable strategy for many businesses.

Like any good discussion on economics, this is rooted in the very simple concept of supply and demand. When supply exceeds demand, prices fall. But in the world of content marketing, the prices cannot fall because the “price” of the content is already zero — we give it away for free. So, to get people to consume our content, we actually have to pay them to do it, and as the supply of content explodes, we will have to pay our customers increasing amounts to the point where it is not feasible any more.

Paying people to read our content? Does that sound crazy? But you’re already doing it. Let me explain.

You are “paying” people to read your content

When I got my very first company laptop computer (a brick-like device called a GRID) I eagerly plugged it into the phone line and took my first step on to the Internet with that unforgettable AOL screech-and-hiss of a connection sound.

I explored the meager content offerings and found a file with NASA photographs. I clicked on a link and over a period of 10 minutes, a photograph began to download onto my screen.

This was a tremendously exciting breakthrough and I called out to my wife and children “Quick! Come see this! I’m getting a photograph right through the telephone line!”

At that time, the seemingly miraculous ability to access a piece of content — any content at all — was a thrill. We were starved for content and stared with wonder at literally anything we could obtain through this new electronic conduit.

Fast forward to 2009, the year I became a serious content creator. At that point, the web was still a relatively uncrowded “content space.”  Red Bull was a beverage company, not a media company, Chipotle was making burritos, not clay-mation films, and there were roughly one-third as many bloggers as there are now … not to mention podcast producers, video-makers, Pinterest pinners, Facebook posters, and Instagram photographers.

Let’s say that in 2009 I spent five hours a week creating content that would be consumed by my blog readers. This was a happy time because not only was the content competition weak, consumption was dramatically increasing too — more people were piling on to the web, on to social media, and on to mobile devices that extended the amount of time each day they could consume content.

For argument’s sake, let’s value my time at $100 per hour. So with 5 hours of content creation in 2009, I was “paying” my readers $500 in my time to consume my content each week. The value I was receiving in return from new business connections far exceeded that investment, so this made good economic sense.

The content model falls apart

Let’s fast forward one more time to 2014 and look at the two factors that impact the economics of content marketing — the amount of content available and the amount of content consumed (supply and demand).

Of course the volume of free content is exploding at a ridiculous rate. Depending on what study you read, the amount of available web-based content (the supply) is doubling every 9 to 24 months. Unimaginable, really.

However, our ability to consume that content (the demand) is finite. There are only so many hours in a day and even if we consume content while we eat, work and drive, there is a theoretical and inviolable limit to consumption, which we are now approaching.

This intersection of finite content consumption and rising content availability will create a tremor I call The Content Shock. In a situation where content supply is exponentially exploding while content demand is flat, we would predict that individuals, companies, and brands would have to “pay” consumers more and more just to get them to see the same amount of content.

And that is exactly what is happening.

I know that you are under a barrage of distractions from increasingly amazing content. For me to simply maintain the “mindshare” I have with you today on this blog, I am going to have to create significantly better content, which of course will take significantly more time. I will probably have to pay Facebook and others to give you a chance to even see it because of this content competition for attention.

I will have to “pay” you at much higher rates just to keep the same number of readers in 2015 that I had in 2014.

Let’s look at this in graphical terms:

According to Nielsen and other sources, the amount of content we consume on a daily basis has grown from two hours a day in the 1920s to nearly 11 hours per day today. Propelled by mobile devices, the average amount of content we consume on a daily basis has gone up by two hours a day just in the last three years!

How much higher can this go? 12 hours a day? 13? Who knows. But there is some limit.

On the supply side of the equation, the amount of information on the web is expected to increase by 500 percent (conservatively) in the next five years. If you can imagine how big the Internet is, in the next five years, we are going to have five of those.

Do you think it is going to be a little more difficult to be successful in content marketing?

Content Shock is here

This upward trend of content consumption is not sustainable because every human has a physiological, inviolable limit to the amount of content they can consume. I believe as marketers, we have been lulled into a false sense of security thinking that this consumption trend will continue to rise without end. That is simply not possible. The Content Shock is coming and I believe we are beginning to enter the danger zone now.

Every single content producer, every marketer, and every business is standing at this same cliff to some degree, and the implications are vast.

1) Deep pockets win

First, as each new media channel has emerged, it is originally fueled with crude “local” content but the eventual winners are the content creators with the deepest pockets. When television started, for example, the airwaves were filled with local programming (kind of like the bloggers of their day!) who created cooking shows, game shows and variety shows using local talent. Today, there is virtually no “local” content consumed on TV, as the corporations have taken over.

If you examined a list of the most popular YouTube videos five years ago, they were “locally-produced” home movies. Today the most popular videos are dominated by big names and big brands producing slickly-produced films and music videos.

Over time, the low budget content producers are eased out of the consumer mindshare as we “pay” more for their attention.

The idea that “great content rises to the top” is over. We are in an era where advertising, promotion, and distribution strategies may eclipse the importance of the content itself.

2) The entry barriers become impossibly high

We see the deep pockets trend occurring in even the smallest market niches. The companies that can overwhelm the market with content can effectively raise the entry hurdles for competitors and maybe even block them out of key search results entirely. Essentially, winning marketers create Content Shock for their competitors!

So the second implication of Content Shock is that barriers to market entry will become impossibly high for many businesses. In 2009 it was pretty easy to start a blog and get a few readers because there just were not that many content producers around. Supply was low, demand was high. How does a small company build an audience today from a standing start in this era of Content Shock? That task is getting more difficult every day.

3) The cost-benefits flip 

Finally, the economics created by Content Shock will eventually force many content marketers to adjust their priorities and tactics.

If I was “paying” my readers $500 a week in 2009, I am probably paying them $1,500 per week now because of the pressure to create more and better content that will keep their attention. Next year, it might be $3,000 per week — just to MAINTAIN my readership in the face of the Content Shock. At some point, the amount I am “paying out” will exceed the amount I am bringing in and at that point, creating content will not be a smart business decision for me and many other businesses.

A few months ago, Facebook provided a glimpse of the economics of Content Shock in its business blog when it bluntly stated that the exploding amount of content competing for views in users’ news feeds is making it increasingly difficult for brands to get their content delivered organically to their fans.

According to research by AgoraPulse, the average organic reach on Facebook for a brand declined by more than 30 percent in the last 12 months. That is a cataclysmic change. Why? Facebook explains that the average user can see more than 1,500 stories in their newsfeed. That is simply too much.

So, they need to severely edit what we see. Starting with brands. And that is Content Shock in action before our eyes. There is too much stuff. So, one way or another, the cost of being successful on Facebook is going up.

And so, it begins. The global warming of content marketing is in view.

Eventually, a “cover the world with content” marketing focus will not be a long-term sustainable strategy for many businesses.

So where do we turn?

Of course content marketing is far from over. How and when the “shock” occurs will vary greatly by business, by industry, by content saturation in a niche, by a lot of other factors. For some the crunch might be years away, for some it is happening now.

Similarly, from the perspective of a consumer, this trend is GOOD NEWS. Companies competing for limited consumer attention means more choice and better content. The impact of Content Shock does not result from consumer “information overload.” It comes from the business implications of fighting through overwhelming content density for a finite level of attention. There’s a big difference.

In the history of marketing, there have always been new frontiers enabled by technological breakthroughs and the visionaries who act first. What is the next area of innovation we need to pioneer when the implications of Content Shock become unbearable?

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Brand Commerce: Navigating through online customer indecision

Congratulations! So you’ve done a great job and attracted some visitors to your website.

Unfortunately now the really hard part begins, convincing said visitors to part with their hard earned money and turning them into customers.

With 68.8% of online baskets being abandoned, this is no small feat.

As marketers we tend to think that abundance of choice in products is one of the key strengths of ecommerce.

But without proper management and structure, this can become a hindrance and not necessarily result in more sales.

For this article we will go through some of the most common reasons behind customer indecision and showcase the brands that are successfully circumventing them through active “Choice Reduction”.

Facing the tyranny of choice

Now faced with the possibility of finding and buying anything online, we see more and more customers unable to commit to making a purchase then and there.

They instead become afflicted by choice paralysis. Unfortunately choice paralysis isn't something only suffered by your new customers. Even those that enter your site having already made a decision can find themselves inundated by all the options available to them and start to question whether theirs is the right one.

In the worst-case scenario, the customers will leave the site and never re-enter the customer journey, instead reverting back to their existing shopping behaviour and just buy from the brand they normally do.

This is because when we fear making a bad decision, we would often rather remove ourselves from the situation and make no decision at all. 

The answer to this is simple, albeit for many brands an impractical one; reduce choice paralysis by limiting the number of visible alternatives available to your consumers.

When this isn't a possibility, there is a need to clearly differentiate between the different options available.  

Relatable product taxonomy

Up until recently, when visiting IKEA’s website you were served with over ten categories in the top navigation.

In a more recent version rolled out as a test in September in the UK and Ireland, the Swedish furniture company moved towards a much clearer taxonomy, organising all the content under just four categories; ‘Products', ‘ Rooms’, ‘Ideas' and 'This is IKEA’. 

Allowing users to find products not only through ‘Products’ but also through ‘Rooms’ allows for a more natural categorisation of products.

The addition of ‘Ideas’ to the mix allows the brand to bundle content while suggesting related products. All in all, providing the user with a simple and easy to navigate experience and an organisation of products more relatable to the customers.

    

Ending shopper procrastination

The introduction of shopping lists has allowed online shoppers to save products and make sense of the vast selections available from e-retailers such as ASOS.

A tool initially designed to single out products, for many it ends up introducing both procrastination and complexity into the customer journey.

Without a limit to amounts of products you can add to a list, you end up mimicking the main ecommerce experience, risking further choice paralysis. ASOS has introduced some limitations to its lists, namely only allowing products on the list for 60 days before being automatically removed.

There are also some other examples e-retailers can learn from. One such example is Priority, O2’s deal oriented app for its subscribers.

For many of the deals run on the app, O2 cleverly links discounts and rewards with time limits. Before choosing to redeem an offer, users are warned that they have a limited amount of time to use said offer.

By adding a sense of urgency, the app pushes the user to commit to the purchase and cuts down on potential procrastination.

This same mechanic can be adapted to e-retailers as well. For example, in cases of prolonged user inactivity, by triggering time limited discounts or free shipping if the purchase is completed within a pre-determined time frame.

 

Removing the last obstacles

When asked in research done by Baymard Institute, 61% of customers declare extra costs as the key reason behind abandoning their online shopping cart.

For many e-commerce sites, shipping costs, insurance and other things are hidden until the last minute. While it might be to mask and lower the perceived cost of making an online purchase, these operators are in fact undermining themselves.

Others such as the fashion brand Reiss are instead upfront with their extra costs. On Reiss’ website, the brand clearly states the different levels of shipping available and the cost the customer can expect. The brand also allows those more concerned with shipping costs to collect their purchase in store. 

 

In the same study, 24% of respondents say they abandoned their cart because they couldn't see the final cost upfront. ASOS counteracts this by allowing the customer to change the type (and cost) of delivery from a dropdown in the shopping basket.

At the same time, through a notification ASOS cleverly tries to trigger the customer into a sale by offering a next-day delivery promo code.

 

While there are several other very effective tactics such as retargeting ads and basket reminder emails, these should be seen more as remedies to treat symptoms and not as relevant solutions to the problem; getting more people to commit to a purchase while on your site.

The methods referenced are some of the simplest and easy-to-implement ways of removing customer indecision from your customer's journey and nudging them into making a purchase.

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10 Metrics to Track for Social Media Success

Do you want to measure the impact of your social media marketing efforts?

Wondering which social media metrics you should focus on?

Analyzing the raw data on campaign performance helps you determine which tactics are working.

In this article, you’ll discover the top 10 social media metrics you should be monitoring on Facebook and Twitter.

#1: Track Follower Growth

Your total count of fans, followers, and page likes represents the number of unique people who have taken an interest in your business. Ideally, you should consistently grow your following. This means the content you’re sharing and the ways you’re engaging your audience need to be enticing enough to attract new fans.

Facebook

On Facebook, it’s easy to get a detailed analysis of your number of page likes. Go to your page and click the Insights tab. Then click Likes in the left navigation.

You’ll see your total likes, as well as gains and losses of likes over a designated time period. This lets you monitor your audience’s reactions to certain posts or determine which time periods are best for bringing in new fans.

View your total number of page likes in Facebook Insights.

Twitter

On Twitter, you can find your follower count on your Twitter account page.

To view trends and statistics for your followers, visit Twitter Analytics. Click on your profile picture at the top right of any Twitter page and choose Analytics from the drop-down menu.

Go to the Home tab of your analytics to view trends and statistics for your Twitter followers.

The data at the top of the page shows a continuous 28-day summary, with information on your followers on the far right. You can see gain/loss trends for recent followers. Scroll down to see a summary for previous months, which includes changes in followers.

#2: Identify Optimal Times for Engagement

Knowing when your audience is most likely to engage with your content is important. It helps you tailor your strategy so you post your content at the right time (when your audience is most active) and the best days of the week.

Facebook

On Facebook, you can view your followers’ daily activity over the last week. By narrowing it down to individual days, you can see how engagement shifts by the hour.

On your Insights page, click Posts in the left navigation and make sure When Your Fans Are Online is selected at the top. Then hover over the different days of the week(Sunday through Saturday) at the top of the Posts tab.

Go to the Posts tab under Insights to view your Facebook followers’ daily activity.

Twitter

Twitter data is a little less comprehensive, as it doesn’t provide engagement statistics for specific times throughout the day. However, you can still see how engagement rises and falls by day over the last 28 days (default) or another designated time period.

To find this information in your analytics, click the Tweets tab at the top of the page.

The Tweets tab shows engagement data for your Twitter account.

#3: Track Likes and Reactions for Your Posts

Gauging how your audience reacts to the content you post and share is crucial for any marketing strategy. This direct response metric helps you determine whether your audience is interested in what you’re currently publishing, and should inform the type of content you share in the future.

If your only engagement is chirping crickets on certain topics, cut that content from your editorial calendar or send those articles through another channel to a different audience segment that might be more receptive.

Facebook

Facebook provides more in-depth measurements with its updated reaction system, which lets you know whether your fans like, love, dislike, or are upset by something you shared.

To find this information, go to your Insights page and click the Posts option in the left navigation. Then scroll down to All Posts Published and click on the right drop-down arrow to view Reactions, Comments, and Shares.

View engagement data for your Facebook posts.

The data in the Engagement column measures the total reactions for a post. If you want to see a more detailed look at a post’s performance, click on the post link to view the breakdown of reactions from your audience.

See a reactions breakdown for a specific Facebook post.

Twitter

Twitter has a similar approach and displays all of your tweets for a selected timeframe. To find this data in your analytics, click the Tweets tab at the top and scroll down to view your tweets. You can also click Top Tweets to view only your most popular tweets.

Check out engagement data for individual tweets.

The Engagements column on the right is helpful, but it includes a lot of extra information (basically any interaction with the tweet). If you’re just looking for likes for a particular post, scroll through the graphs on the right until you see Likes. This data shows the daily number of likes that your tweets are receiving, as well as your average likes per day.

The Likes graph shows the daily number of likes your tweets are receiving.

#4: Monitor Mentions

Your fans and prospects are out there talking about you and you want to be a part of that conversation. For this reason, it’s important to track your mentions. On Facebook, you’ll get notifications whenever someone tags your business/username in their post.

If people are not directly tagging you, you’ll need to use a third-party tool to keep track of mentions on Twitter.

#5: Delve Into Audience Demographics

As you grow your following, monitoring your audience demographics can inform your strategy and help you modify posts and paid ads for future promotions.

Facebook

On Facebook, you can access audience information in your Insights under People. Click the Your Fans section to view various demographic factors for your fan base.

View demographics for your Facebook audience.

Twitter

On Twitter, your analytics data provides audience information related to your followers. Simply click on Audiences to find the relevant information.

You’ll see a broad overview of your audience, as well as specific demographics, lifestyle interests, and other information.

Check out demographics for your Twitter following on the Audiences tab.

If you’re using Twitter for Business with paid advertising, you’ll also have a Brand Hub tab at the top of the page, which includes more in-depth audience demographic information.

Get more in-depth audience data on the Brand Hub tab.

#6: Determine Reach

The Reach metric combines the number of people you’ve reached both within and outside of your audience. When people engage with your content, their activity is usually shared with their connections, which increases your page’s reach.

Mixing more engaging content into your social strategy can significantly improve the reach of both your posts and your business.

Facebook

On Facebook, go to your Insights tab and click the Reach option in the navigation panel on the left. The top graph you see displays your post reach, which is basically the number of people who saw your post.

Scroll to the bottom of the page to find your total reach. This is the number of people who saw any activity from your page as a result of follower interactions, ads, mentions, check-ins, and so on.

Look at Reach data in your Facebook Insights.

In the top Post Reach graphic, you can click on any given day to view posts that contributed to that day’s post reach count.

Twitter

On Twitter, click the Tweets tab in your analytics to display an Impressions column. This is the number of impressions for each tweet. As people interact with your tweets, the number of impressions will rise as a result of expanded reach.

Monitor the number of impressions for individual tweets.

#7: Review Replies and Comments for Your Posts

Replies and comments on your posts can help you gauge how interesting or engaging your topics are. As with reactions, they’re direct response metrics that help you weed out uninteresting content from your publishing schedule.

Because replies are typed out, you can also view individual posts that performed well to measure follower/fan sentiment.

Facebook

To find this information on Facebook, go to your Insights and click the Posts option in the left navigation. Scroll down to All Posts Published and click the right drop-down arrow to view Reactions, Comments, and Shares.

Look at replies and comments on Facebook.

From here, you can view comment counts. If you want more details on the comments and audience sentiment, click on the post link to open the post’s details and read through your followers’ comments.

Twitter

On Twitter, you can easily measure the number of replies for each post, but bringing up replies to your tweets is a little more complicated.

You can view post reply counts in your Twitter analytics. Click the Tweets tab at the top of the page and choose either Tweets or Top Tweets below the graph.

Click on individual tweets to view engagement levels, which include the number of replies you received.

Look at replies for individual tweets.

The graph on the right shows both the total replies for a designated period and the average number of replies for each day.

#8: Find Out What Content Is Being Shared

Content shares are important because they reflect how your audience perceives the value of your content. Highly shared posts indicate that your audience found the topic or type of content particularly helpful, or had a strong emotional or psychological connection to it. The more often content is shared, the greater the reach.

To measure shares on both Facebook and Twitter, follow the above steps for measuring replies and comments. For Facebook, find your shares, and for Twitter focus on retweets.

#9: Track Referral Traffic From Social Media

Acquisition data tells you what kind of traffic you’re getting from social to your website and how that traffic performs once it arrives. If you find one or more social channels aren’t bringing you the number of click-throughs you expected, use this data to improve your calls to action and campaigns.

Unlike the other metrics listed above, you’ll find your referral traffic data in your Google Analytics. Under Acquisition in the left navigation, click on the Social top-level menu. In the menu under Social, click Overview or Network Referrals.

Access your referral traffic in Google Analytics.

The Overview tab provides basic information on total sessions from each social network. On the the Network Referrals tab, view session counts, page views, duration, and pages visited per session.

View traffic from social in Google Analytics.

#10: Examine Click Rates

Click rates have everything to do with conversions. Although they don’t specifically focus on revenue generation, clicks help you understand how your followers engage with you, why they’re engaging, and what’s making them click on different links.

Facebook

Facebook has a fairly extensive click-tracking system. If you go to Posts on the Insights tab, you’ll find the number of post clicks for each individual post. This data signifies what content your fans found most interesting or enticing.

Go to Actions on Page in the left navigation to see click counts for various elements(phone, directions, website, call to action, etc.). It also shows clicks based on user demographics.

The Actions on Page section shows click counts for various actions.

Twitter

Use the above method for tracking retweets on Twitter to view individual link clicks in posts.

You can also use a service like Buffer or Bit.ly for tracking your link clicks with custom links for different social channels.

Conclusion

Monitoring your brand’s online performance is important, but keeping a close eye on your audience metrics is even more crucial. It’s the best way to create targeted, customized content to improve engagement with your audience.

What do you think? How often do you monitor follower metrics at this level? Does data analysis influence your marketing strategy? Let us know your cool tips and tactics in the comments below.

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