Social Media Metrics For Dummies

Recognizing Compelling, Shareable Content

I would argue that much of the battle for great metrics starts with great content. Even if you run an ecommerce site or a static site and not a blog, you still need to view everything on it as potentially shareable content and think of ways to use it for two-way metrics.

What are two-way metrics? Tracking content as it’s shared from your site, including those off-site conversations that may lead to conversion, and tracking incoming metrics to see what parts of your site convert, compel, or repel your visitors.

If you’ve been around the Internet at all the last few years, you’ve heard people bandy about the terms SEO (search engine optimization), SMO (social media optimization), keywords, meta tags, and the like. All of these long-standing tactics for getting people to find your content are still valid, but the way they’re used has changed dramatically with the rise of social tools like Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.

A solid rule used to be that using your keywords in your content would help your content rise to the top quickly (and in many cases, make it sound incredibly awkward upon reading). Stuffing your page with keywords is less important than creating good content people want to read, watch, or listen to now.

Finding your content comfort zone

To create compelling content, the first thing you need to do is find your content comfort zone. Because creating content takes time and time is at a premium for any business owner or freelancer, ...