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Many businesses have discovered that social media is an ideal way to connect and engage with people who are passionate about what the organization does. If your nonprofit is currently using social media but you’re not sure how effective your strategy is, learning about which social media analytics for businesses matter most will allow you to properly analyze your current strategy and make the right adjustments going forward. So to help you get started, here are the five metrics you need to know about:

Conversions

A common misconception about conversions is if a nonprofit isn’t directly selling anything on their website, this metric isn’t relevant. However, since the term “conversions” can refer to anything from enlisting volunteers to getting someone to send a message to their friends, this is actually the most important type of social media analytics for nonprofits. This metric allows you to clearly see how many social media users who visit your website take one or more of the actions that you want.

Overall Traffic

One thing that’s very important to understand about social media analytics is it takes some time to build up a strong following. And in most cases, the direct social traffic to your website will follow the same gradual growth curve. So what you want to keep an eye out for are any sudden spikes or drops in gradual traffic. If you see one, you’ll want to dig into your data to see what caused it. Then this will help you understand what to do more of or avoid in the future.

Sentiment

Even though your organization may not need to provide direct customer support, it’s still helpful to understand whether the majority of social media conversations about your nonprofit are positive or negative. This can be especially useful for understanding if you’re going down the right path with a new initiative.

Engagement

Since it can take time to convert a social media user into someone who donates or does something else for your organization, it’s easy to see why engagement is a key part of effective social media analytics for businesses. By continuously focusing on increasing engagement, you’ll ultimately increase your conversion rate. Measuring engagement can also be helpful for determining what kind of content does best on specific social networks.

Followers

The reason this metric is last on the list is while it can have value, it’s a metric that many businesses emphasize too much. One of the most common social media mistakes that businesses make is only focusing on how many followers they’ve accumulated. If a social media profile has a lot of followers but very few of them are actually engaging on a regular basis, it’s going to be hard to drive meaningful results. So while it’s worth keeping an eye on the number of people following your organization, focusing most of your attention on the other metrics will help you the most.

Even though this may seem like a lot of information to collect and maintain, our social media analytics dashboard can make it easy to stay on top of the metrics that matter most for your nonprofit organization. If you’re looking for the simplest way to stay on top of your company’s social media efforts, be sure to take a look at the Send Social Media Dashboard 7-day trial!