Measuring social media success for sustainable organisations

Measuring social media success for any organisation is a complex task. This is especially true for sustainable organisations where objectives can go beyond simple reach or sales. To properly understand and improve the impact of your social media strategy, it’s important to understand your audience, pick relevant metrics, consider your brand, and adapt based on the information you gather.

Understand your Audience

Before establishing objectives, KPIs and strategies, it’s important to understand the space you’ll be working in. A survey of over 1,200 marketers, found that only 42% know the basic demographic information of their target audience. Sustainability has become a prominent issue for people and organisations across the world. You need to figure out who you’re talking to, and who else is communicating in that space. 

An awareness campaign for the public, or thought leadership to influence policy makers, will have very different forms of content, and different measures of success. Knowing the space you’re working in will allow you to research how others are faring, giving you a benchmark to measure your own efforts off of.

Be SMART on Sustainability

Setting SMART objectives is vital to having a relevant and measurable goal to compare your social media progress to. As an organisation working in the sustainability space, Specificity and Relevance are especially important when setting your objectives. You need to ensure they both align with the overall goals of your organisation, and, perhaps more importantly, they conform to your organisation’s values. Your objectives should be closely tied with the audience you’re trying to reach, and the outcome you’re looking to get from them. But your presence on social media should also reflect the values your company upholds, and convey those to potential consumers, partners, and stakeholders. This, as much as reach or number of downloads, needs to be an integral part of your thinking when establishing your objectives.

Utilising the SMART framework effectively will help you focus your social media efforts on goals that will further your organisation’s sustainability agenda, and promote the values that will appeal to your audience. 

Establish Relevant KPIs

A Global State of Enterprise study found that 94% of businesses view data and analytics as important for their growth. When it comes to communication online though, there’s a whole host of metrics that can be quantified, measured and analysed. Not all are going to be relevant for what you’re trying to achieve, or the audience you’re trying to reach. Identifying and tracking the right KPIs is key to making the most out of your data. 

Digital Marketing KPIs

• Audience reach
  • Followers, subscribers, connections
• Visibility
  • Impressions, views
• Engagement
  • Likes, shares, mentions, comments, replies
• Traffic
  • CTR, link clicks, page visits, referrals
• Content Performance
  • Views, bounce, dwell, view time
• Conversions
  • Signups, subscriptions, registrations, sales

What should you measure?

You need to choose appropriate KPI that reflect the aims and priorities of your social media strategies. That means they need to align with your SMART objectives, and give a proper picture of how you’re progressing in relation to these stated goals. Establishing a baseline for these metrics is important to give a solid baseline from which to measure your progress, and properly understand the impact your social media strategy is having. 

If your strategy involves driving downloads to a white paper or sign ups for a seminar, the funnel approach can give you useful points of reference. Segmenting your audience’s journey, from first awareness of your brand, to final sign up or download, can give you a better picture of how they’re progressing, and in what areas your efforts are falling short. 

Whether utilising paid or organic media, the cost of your efforts is always worth measuring. How much time and resources are needed for customer acquisition? How does that compare to other segments of your audience? Measuring and understanding these metrics will enable you to measure the return on your marketing investment, and adjust your actions accordingly.

What you shouldn’t measure

Just as important as what you measure, is what you don’t. Measuring poor or misleading KPIs doesn’t just waste your time, it can give you a false impression of the strengths and weaknesses of your social marketing strategy. This can lead you to chasing empty metrics, or making unnecessary changes that compromise your primary objectives. 

Vanity metrics, like top google search for a keyword that’s not relevant, or high impressions that don’t convert, can look impressive on a report, but don’t hold any real value. Sustainable organisations in particular often have very specific aims and audiences in mind. Metrics that don’t measure impact amongst those audiences, or progress towards those aims ultimately only detract from your strategy. 

Similarly, there’s no point measuring what you can’t impact. If there’s no changes you can make that will influence a metric, there’s no point including it in your strategy or your measurements.

Segment and Target your Messaging

When measuring social media success it’s important to recognize that you’ll often be talking to more than one group of consumers or stakeholders. This is especially true for sustainable organisations that typically work with a diverse group of organisations and individuals. This targeted approach will enable you to better track engagement, sentiment, and conversion rates among specific audiences.

Segmenting your audiences, targeting your messages for these segments, and measuring them individually is important to getting a clear understanding of which elements of your messaging is working for which audiences. This will allow you to adapt and improve specific messaging to cover weaknesses in reach without compromising other areas that may be doing well.

How to Monitor

Once you know what metrics you’re looking for, you need to figure out how you’re going to gather and track the information. Setting up a KPI sheet provides an important record that can be regularly updated to show how progress is developing.  This can serve as both a real time measure, and a reference document where past months can easily be collected and compared. 

There is a variety of software out there to help in gathering the relevant information, but which one is appropriate for you will depend on the metrics you’re trying to measure. SEMRush can track relevant keywords and how they’re ranking, GA4 can give you insight into website traffic from different sources, and native social platform analytics will allow you to track the key metrics for your channels. 

While the focus will likely be on traditional engagement and reach metrics in measuring the success of your social media, other more unique or specific metrics can also play a role. 

As a sustainability organisation you may have specific goals in mind, or ideas you’re looking to promote that go beyond simple reach or sales. Tracking these specialised goals as part of your social media approach is important to give a complete view of its strengths and weaknesses. These indicators could include sustainability pledges, engagement from important influencers or organisations, or mentions in trade or national press.  While not always directly linked, these metrics are an important part of the impact your social media strategy is having

Analyse qualitative not just quantitative 

As an organisation working in the sustainability space, values and public perception are an important part of your brand. Sentiment analysis is a vital tool in understanding how your audience perceives you.

Part of any social media strategy for a sustainable organisation is building up a brand that is recognizable as value driven and environmentally and socially responsible. This image will have an impact with how the audience interacts with your content, and how open they are to your ideas, products, and services. Properly measuring and understanding this sentiment then is vital to ensuring the public’s perception fits the image you’re trying to cultivate. 

Consider Influence and Thought Leadership

66% of marketers consider thought leadership a top priority. This is especially true in the sustainability space where ideas and innovation are greatly valued. Organisations need to show they have the expertise and resources to understand and overcome the environmental and social challenges we face.

Many sustainable organisations look to become thought leaders in their respective field and demonstrate their knowledge to their audience. Much of this will come through blogs, articles, and interviews, often pushed through social media. This can help the organisation in shaping discussion on key issues, and reaching their target audience from a place of authority. Measuring the impact of these thought leadership pieces can demonstrate an organisation’s authority in its sector and form an important part of its brand. 

Understand and Adapt

Whatever your chosen metric, channel, or sector, collecting the data is only the first step. Through analysis and adaptation, you can use this information to shore up weaknesses and build upon your success.

Measuring your social media success is an ongoing process and requires continuously assessing and reassessing your performance against your KPIs and objectives. Using data-driven insights can help you effectively adapt your social media strategy and content to suit your audience. Methods like A/B testing can help refine messaging, visuals, and posting schedules to maximise engagement and impact.

By measuring the right metrics, and comparing you can get an accurate picture of which content is performing best to fulfil your strategic objectives, and what’s falling short. By looking at this information you can see what’s working, what isn’t, and the elements you can focus on to improve your social media performance going forward.

Conclusion

In conclusion, measuring social media success as a sustainable organisation means properly understanding who you’re trying to reach, and what engagement metrics best reflect your state objectives. Setting clear goals will allow you to see the effect your social media strategy is having, while utilising data driven can allow you to adapt and refine your messaging to optimise its impact.

Get in touch today and find out how we can help you make the most of your social media strategy.