Behind the Scenes: ICONMA’s Social Media Metrics

It is easier than ever to connect with individuals, organizations, and companies worldwide at your fingertips in the digital age and it’s all thanks to social media. Many people remember the early 2000s, by spending countless hours scrolling through sites like MySpace, AIM (AOL Instant Messaging), even the early days of Facebook and Twitter.. However, social media has grown in the past two decades from being a fun, pastime activity to an entire industry with thousands of employees monitoring, operating, and utilizing social media as a part of their daily work responsibilities.

If you’ve ever been curious about how companies utilize social media to enhance their business goals, let’s look at how ICONMA uses social media metrics and some of our best tips and tricks to manage and increase your social following from a business perspective.

What are social media metrics?

Social media metrics comprise various pieces of data that allow companies or even individuals to track online user engagement. Your goals for social media will determine your metrics. For example, if your goal is to create greater awareness for your website, you would want to post content that links content to your website and includes hyperlinks in your posts.

Some metrics might be more important for you to track than others. In the example above, tracking your engagement rate and reach will be important to gain insight into your goal.
Here are some common social media terms and metrics to keep an eye on as your sharing posts to social media:

Likes, Comments, Retweets, etc.: Individual engagement metric from another social media count

Engagement rate: The number of total engagements divided by impressions or reach

Account mentions: Organic mentions, using an @ in front of another users social media account to get their attention

Organic: un-paid

Impressions:  are how many times a post shows up in someone’s timeline

Reach: is the potential unique viewers a post could have

The importance behind keeping track of this data is for companies to find the best methods for reaching their audience. Depending on the company, some social media strategies work better than others

How ICONMA measures social media data

ICONMA using efficient and advanced technology as a tool to give our customers and candidates the best experience. This also applies to the platforms and tools we use for our social media platforms. ICONMA has a partnership with Sprout Social to schedule content on social media, view analytics and monitor our social platforms.

Each quarter, we report on changes in our following, impressions, and engagement to see what strategies have been working, and what we need to improve on. We also monitor our online presence via Job boards, Glassdoor, Indeed, Google etc. After we pull a quarterly report that measures each platforms impressions, engagements, post link clicks we compare the current data to the previous quarter to measure our progress.

Our findings

After completing our first quarterly report of 2022, we found that ICONMA’s social media presence has increased immensely compared to our previous months and even years. Our profiles have shown an overall increase in impressions and engagements.

See the charts below for a more in depth look and comparison:

Chart:

ICONMA’s tips and tricks

Methods of monitoring social media metrics vary depending on the company and what resources are available at their disposal. Larger companies or those with a larger following may consider reporting their data more frequently if their engagement and following is growing at a very fast pace. Some may choose to monitor and report yearly if they’re just starting their online presence.

One strategy to increase your online engagement is to understand and utilize the power of hashtags. When creating posts, always add a few relevant hashtags at the end of your text to increase visibility. The best way to find the right hashtags is doing research and looking at what others in your field are using. You can even create your own hashtag to keep track of posts related to your brand or company.

Taking your company on social media is all about experimenting and seeing how users interact with your content. There are some posting strategies and formats that work better on some platforms rather than other or the hashtags you used weren’t gaining traction, the times you schedule posts, even the way you structure your content can have an impact on viewership.
The important thing to remember is to be consistent with your reporting. Consistency allows you to easily compare new and old data and track how your strategy’s changes to your online presence have impacted your online presence.

The constant challenge those in social media marketing always run into is the constant changing of social media algorithms. Sites will change their algorithms periodically to aim users at the content they want. As the typical user, these changes are welcomed more easily. For those who use social media for business, it sometimes means going back to the drawing board and reworking strategies to get your content noticed.

Wrap up

The social media landscape is constantly changing; therefore, what might work right now, might not in the future and vice versa. Grasping onto the right social media strategy can take a lot of brainstorming, experimenting, and teamwork, but with hard work and planning, you’ll see everything come together and your channels grow.

Don’t forget to follow us on social media @ICONMA via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

April 21, 2022