Social Media Metrics For Dummies

Knowing When to Listen and When to Talk

A calendar is going to be an essential part of your arsenal as well as your spreadsheet(s). You can find useful metrics tracking by date, time of day, holiday, and time of year. Date tracking helps you discover when your audience is engaging with you, when your goals and campaigns are having the most traction, when your conversions spike, and more.

In fact, applying your date metrics to a calendar of engagement and a calendar of listening is key. You won’t find useful date metrics in the short term. Expect it to take anywhere from one month minimum to three months before you start seeing useful date metrics over time.

Look for patterns over time. Is your audience made up of early risers? Perhaps you get more attention for your content from folks surfing the net during the middle of the day at work. When do people talk most to or about your brand? Are there times of day where listening and collecting metrics data will deliver more information than others?

Incorporate your competition into the date metrics you’re doing. Use that competitive intelligence to structure your next launch or campaign or simply to decide when to become more visible in any given day for the purpose of building your own business.

As you use spreadsheets and calendar layouts ...