I am often asked to include an interpretation of Twitter engagement in our monthly reports to our clients. Most of the time it is hard for people to gauge the return on investment of a simple feed. Our projects at the agency include working with bloggers and brand ambassadors at an event, trade show or for a brand launch. When we complete a campaign, we examine interactions, engagement and impressions. This is how we determine the success of a product.

There are many reports we look at for cross-referencing. But when it comes down to analyzing the results with our clients, we like to keep things simple to avoid confusion. I am going to share with you what we look for in each metric and why.

• Interactions – These are the number of Twitter mentions, Retweets and Facebook stories created for a branded profile. This metric helps us understand how engaged and involved the audience is. A good example would be to use this measurement to see the level of conversation a brand ambassador generates for a product or service.
• Unique Users – This shows us the number of people who interacted with our brands Twitter profiles or Facebook Pages; or in other words, followers that one way or another have replied to, favored or retweeted a tweet. In essence, we look for any conversation that a brand can generate on a product’s social media profile.
• Impressions – A combined number of potential users that look at content associated with a user’s Twitter & Facebook profiles. Almost like a billboard on the highway, this is a traditional metric used for magazine and media circulation and one that most people can relate to.

How It All Works

An event could generate a good number of impressions, but little interaction from unique users and few conversations. If this happens, we would revise the campaign to generate more engagement in the future. It all depends upon which metric we are aiming to use. Some brands only want impressions while others want to generate buzz and viral traffic.

Here Is An Example

You could have 2M impressions, but only 1K interactions. This indicates that the volume of visitors (2M) did not engage with the content as much as we would like. A more desired effect would be if we had 8K impressions with 3K interactions this show us that conversations have been taking place and the brand is noticed. This metric is typically found during a twitter gathering or a tweet chat.

Best Applications to Use

We set up metric goals when we create a promotion and determine our objectives. Once we build and launch a campaign, we track data via our social media platforms using applications like Hootsuite, SproutSocial or Twitter Analytics. These are simple tools to use and offer good technical support via Twitter or through the platform itself.

In Conclusion

ROI is always a concern for our clients so we like to show them what they are paying for and how a program can garner buzz and can spread around the Internet. Metrics are a necessary component of any campaign and clients need to be kept informed. In the final analysis, to know what is effective or needs tweaking can only enhance a brand’s performance in social media.