Course Content
1. The elements of communication
2. Internal communication plan
3. Metrics
4. Conclusions
Communication 4.0 represents a challenge due to the enormous speed of digital transformation. We have reviewed external communication processes with an emphasis on the digital tools needed to effectively communicate our ideas and reach our target audience, stressing the creation of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. We have also seen the need for a digital marketing strategy that allows us to define our objectives and the subjacent principles that govern any marketing proposal. On the other hand, we have seen the creation of an internal communication plan, highlighting the most remarkable features and the need for open and fluid communication between employees. We closed our module with a brief approach to social media metrics to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of our communication strategies. In short, we focused on practical creation, promoting a step-by-step vision of development and implementation. We hope this module can contribute to achieving your goals and help you to lead your future communication strategy. Remember that adaptation is a fundamental competence of the creation process and, therefore, we want to encourage you to be updated on the trends of communication 4.0 and to make the most of your efforts.
Social Media Metrics
Before we end our module, we will examine the metrics of social media, in other words, how to measure the numbers of users that are engaged in our communication channels. As we have mentioned before the Key performance metrics provide measurement and insights that might help during your strategy plan. There are different types of metric analysis which we will see in the next unit The ROI (return on investment) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency or profitability of an investment. ROI tries to measure the amount of return on a particular investment[1]. Regarding social media, our ROI will tend to measure the return on investment from the social media actions carried out.
In social media, there are different indicators to be measured. We highlight the following:[2]:
- 1.Numbers of social media followers, knowing how many users are currently engaged in your social media accounts, is accessible. Thus, it is important to measure how many users you have.
- 2.Impressions and Reach, reach shows the number of unique users that were exposed to your content, while impressions show the number of times your content was displayed to these users (Keyhole). However, each social media has particularities to be aware of. For further exploration on this topic, we suggest you the following video.
- 3.Engagement, shows how social media efforts are engaging your users. Some metrics for monitoring are
- – The numbers of likes, comments, shares, etc.
- – Click-through rate (CTR): (the number of clicks/ number of impressions. This metric visualizes who clicks your link after seeing the tour post) x 100
- – Engagement rate: (the total of interactions (likes, comments, shared) / the numbers of users who have seen the publication) x100.
- 4.Web traffic, is important to understand which channels are driving the traffic of your users to your website. The longer your users stay, the more likely it is for them to engage with your content, buy a product, or become updated on the latest news of your place.
To start with our social media metrics, we want to keep it simple. First, is necessary to plan and give time to our digital marketing plan. Once it is designed and implemented it is recommendable to measure how our digital interaction is going, especially, on social media. We have seen, how social media represents a predominant tool for implanting our external communication strategy. Now, we want to track our ROI and analyze our time investment and productivity, for that, we have created a template that contains the basics for setting up our first metrics guidelines. Therefore, the expected outcome is to establish a well-grounded measurement of our time investment concerning our communication strategy. Some of the features we have integrated are:
General information:
- – Name of social network
- – Number of posts
- – Number of followers
Specific information.
- – Date of post
- – Types of posts
- – Number of likes
- – Nº of comments
- – Highlighted comments
- – Reach users
- – Numbers of impressions (number of people who have seen the post)
- – Engagement (likes, comments, shares, retweets)
- – Other comments
By tracking the performance on your social media accounts, you might be able to understand and have a wider perspective if the content you are publishing is seen and is being interactive. You can use the following metric as an example for your future metric plan. We recommend analyzing your performance now and then, some marketing experts suggest evaluating the performance carried out each from the publication of the content. If the numbers of reach, impressions, and engagement increase, it means your social networks are attracting users and keeping potential users.