In the social media world, content is king. 64% of people follow channels based on content and will leave if they lose interest. To keep followers engaged, influencers need to know what content appeals to their fanbase and what drives them away.
It’s a balancing act. Followers want everything on their favorite channels to have the familiar style they love but also like to be surprised. Experimentation and innovation are what satisfies that desire. Most celebrities track the success of their content through simple metrics such as likes and shares. The savviest, however, look for the deeper insight provided by advanced analytics.
The limitations of standard toolsets
Social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube offer some limited analysis of activity on their platform. Facebook Insights offers more than other sites: not only raw engagement (the number of likes, comments, and shares) but impressions and referrals. It even provides a broad overview of where people interact with your page, whether it’s through your own posts or page suggestions.
The base social media toolsets work well enough for beginning influencers. Those who want to monetize their audience will find them frustrating. There isn’t enough detail to refine revenue streams or identify top users, and relating the metrics to specific content is labor-intensive.
Facebook’s newest update lets people track their likes over time, for example, but doesn’t correlate that with activity. It’s hard to see why people are unfollowing the page, or what caused a surge of new views.
Engagement metrics such as view counts can also be misleading. Some experts refer to views as a “vanity metric”, a number that sounds good without carrying a lot of meaning. The count can be artificially inflated through practices like Facebook’s default autoplay setting. Facebook counts every video started as a view. This means influencers think people are watching a video when they’re just scrolling past it.
YouTube counts views after 30 seconds. This does weed out autoplay hits but doesn’t account for the number of people who started a video and left before their visit could be recorded. Is the video not attracting views or are people closing it out within 30 seconds? Influencers have no way to know.
Metrics that matter
Engagement is a quick and easy assessment of a site’s overall performance. When it comes to fine-tuning content, however, other metrics are more useful. Hereare the top six ways to measure your site’s actual performance.
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Bounce rate
How many people leave your site after viewing only one page? If this number is high, you know there’s something lacking on your landing page. Maybe it’s not visually compelling, or navigation is confusing. Either way, watch your bounce rate for a warning that something isn’t right.
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Pages Per Session/ Time Per Visit
What’s the average number of pages a user browses before leaving your site? How long do they spend reading or interacting with your posts? This is a direct measure of how followers feel about your content.
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Conversation rate
Is your content interesting enough to inspire conversations? Likes are passive actions that don’t mean much when it comes to measuring approval, and shares are only slightly more encouraging. A better way to see how followers actually feel about content is to track the conversation rate. This is the average number of comments- not likes or shares- on your average post.
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Click through rate
Do people click links shared through your page? Influencers need to drive traffic to their sponsors if they want to successfully monetizetheir social media activity. When traffic through shared links dips too low advertisers will look elsewhere.
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Share of voice
How much of the conversation on a particular topic is driven by your brand? Are you considered an expert or a leader in your niche? Share of voice, or SOV, measures the percentage of mentions within an industry or field are about you and how many are about your competitors. It’s one of the more important metrics for up-and-coming influencers to know. The higher the share of voice, the more you can demand in terms of advertising or promotional incentives.
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Share of referred traffic
Where are your page visitors coming from? Do people find you through social media, or is traffic mostly search-driven? Knowing where your views originate guides decisions on where to spend your time, whether it’s investing more in lagging platforms or focusing your efforts where it has the fastest payoff.
Evaluating your shared traffic should include a breakdown of that pages per session metric we discussed earlier. If you only get 20% of your visitors through Instagram but those users spend the most time on your site once they click through, Instagram is more important than it might seem at first glance.
Identifying superusers
One critical responsibility of your analytics should be identifying your superusers. Superusers are your most dedicated fans. They read everything you post, share and comment frequently, buy branded products or show tickets, and generate their own content in response to yours. Their enthusiasm drives others to your page.
Giving your superusers extra attention has a noticeable payoff in terms of increased engagement. If you notice that a superuser has been sharing fan art inspired by your latest album, simply liking the Tweet causes a ripple effect of goodwill and activity. It’s a proportionately large return on a small time investment- but you can’t give your superusers attention if you don’t know who they are. Finding them through social media is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Taking it a step farther
Social media is a powerful tool for reaching out, but it limits the information you as an influencer have about how your followers behave. A tailored platform like FanHero is the best way to gain insight into your fans, to find out what they want and how they feel about your content. Unlike most social media, Fan Hero analytics reveal those six vital metrics plus more in-depth information like:
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User engagement levels How often does a user return to the page on a daily/weekly basis?
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Return on user engagement How many new users are generated by retweets and shares?
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Follower sentiment What do users look at and how long do they pause on a page? What made them stay or leave?
FanHero can also track events triggered by individual users to suggest actions that drive further engagement or revenue. A new follower can be shown upgraded plans with more options for access, and fans who share their area can be prompted to buy tickets to nearby concerts. Actions like this encourage user retention and engagement because they feel more personalized than generic mass push notifications.
Staying ahead of the curve
At the end of the day, influencers need an engagement platform built specifically for their needs. Social media isn’t going anywhere, but on its own it doesn’t have the tools to help you focus on what matters most: your fans. FanHero puts your followers and their behavior in context, creating a better experience for them and a more lucrative income stream for you.
Are you ready to put your fans first? Contact FanHero today to make your followers happy (and make money doing it!).
