The Most Common Social Media Conversions
Here’s a list of the most effective conversions to look for when measuring social media:
1. Engagement is the most common conversion that brands see within their social media profiles and it is often the most easy to achieve in varying degrees. Engagement includes any action a user takes on your brand’s profile. For example, a Like on Facebook, a comment on a YouTube video or even a Retweet on Twitter. This conversion helps spread awareness to a user’s entire personal network about your brand. Engagement that holds more weight in social media are the higher level actions that take more efforts from a user. For example, a Like in Facebook hold less weight than a comment in Facebook does. While a Retweet holds less weight than a mention in Twitter. Any engagement is helpful, its just important to remember some is weighted more heavily than others.
2. E-Commerce as a conversion is still in its infancy in terms of social media, but is growing by leaps and bounds. Having a browser directly convert to a buyer from one of your social media accounts can be extremely powerful because that sale can be instantly shared with their entire network. Whether its through a shopping application on Facebook or through a direct buy from a link on twitter, social media ecommerce comes in a variety of forms. For instance, the ticket retailer for concerts and events Eventbrite has completed a 12 week internal study that estimated that a “share” on Facebook is worth $2.52 in increased tickets sales and a share on Twitter is worth about $0.43 for their company, which is indirect ecommerce. Now this example does not apply to everyone, but its just an example of how converting a user can help you brand earn profit in the short or long term.
3. Lead generation is another common conversion brands receive from their social media efforts. Lead generations also encompasses many different things, for instance gathering the usernames of prominent industry leaders in your Twitter account can help you learn more about your industry and connect with potential partners. While setting up a contest on Facebook that requires users to enter their names and email addresses as entry is another form of lead conversion. Even something as simply searching through current conversations and gauging whether there is interest for your product, services or cause within a specific geographic location is social media based lead generation.
4. Service conversion is best visualized as a 3 step funnel. When a user receives service from your social media profiles it’s a type of conversion that helps strengthen your overall brand awareness in both the short and long term. If that user learns something from the content you shared it will help them associate that type of information with your brand. If a user is made of aware of new services and information about your brand they will also hopefully associate you as the industry standard for that type of cause, product or service. For instance, ING Direct regularly shares True and False investment tips on Facebook that gain a lot of leverage. People begin to come back for more tips, while strengthening their association with ING Direct as the resource for investment knowledge on the web.
5. Traffic to your website is another conversion many brands receive through their social media accounts. Sending traffic to your website can lead a user to read an article on your website, learn more about your business, continue on the sales funnel or help them complete a sleuth of other actions. Many websites you their social profiles for merely news aggregation platforms, not actively monitoring the network, but focusing on letting people know when they’ve posted a new article or resource. For instance, Mashable and the New York Times merely update the majority of their Twitter profiles with new articles they’ve posted, but because they are actively choosing to use the Twitter platform in this manner.
