Inbound Marketing Insights

In today's digital age, social media has become essential to any successful inbound marketing strategy. Whether you're a B2B company targeting other businesses or a B2C business catering to consumers, having a strong presence on social media is crucial. It allows you to connect with your target audience, build brand awareness, and drive engagement that can ultimately lead to conversions. How often should you track these metrics? Monthly.

1. Website Sessions: Understand the number of web sessions on your site that took place within a selected period that came from social media. If you are posting content such as blogs and landing pages, this is important to track so you can see how your social media activity is driving increased website engagement.
2. New & Re-Engaged Contacts: In addition to website sessions, you can also see how many new leads/contacts you have created from social media and how many contacts have re-engaged with your social media content.
3. Reach: Measure how your social media audience is growing. This provides information on your follower base and the number of people you could reach with your posts.
4. Published Posts: See the number of posts published across your accounts in a specific time period. Posting more doesn't necessarily generate more engagement, but this will help you see how your activity changes over time and how that impacts other social metrics.
5. Impressions: Gain insight into the number of views your posts have generated across your social channels.
6. Interactions: Measure the number of likes, comments, and shares of your social posts. Increasing your prospect’s engagement on your social media posts will improve the chances of them seeing and interacting with your future posts.
7. Clicks: See the number of clicks on posts you share on social media. You can track clicks to your own website links and also clicks to articles you may share as part of your thought leadership program. This helps you see what type of link-based content is most helpful to your audience.
8. Shares: Measure the total number of shares across each of your social networks for a given time frame. It will also help you see what content is so valuable that your audience not only engages with it, but also shares it with their followers. 

The following shows how you can visually look at this information and compare it to prior time periods to see your growth over time. This will help you see how your social media presence impacts your overall digital marketing program.

Social media is essential to any digital marketing program. It helps you reach a wider audience and grows your reach. As a B2B company, you can build your thought leadership and trust among your audience. As a B2C company, you can build your audience and engagement while increasing direct sales from your social media program. It's important to always monitor and analyze how your social media is driving results so you can focus on the right channels and content to continually engage your audience. 

Are you looking for ways to optimize your inbound strategy? The "book "Mastering Inbound Marketing: Your Complete Guide to Building a Results-Driven Inbound Strategy," written by Elyse Flynn Meyer, Owner & Founder of Prism Global Marketing Solutions, covers every aspect of the inbound marketing methodology, including the revenue generation trifecta of marketing, sales, and the customer experience. Check out the book to see how to most efficiently and effectively develop, implement, and maintain your inbound strategy.