Social Media Campaign Monitoring — Do You Really Need It?

7 min readJul 7, 2021

The number of social media users rises to 3.6 billion and 73% of marketers have deemed the use of social media marketing “effective” or “very effective” for their business, according to research. This goes on to show the importance of online presence and marketing in today’s world. However, just creating a business page and running campaigns isn’t going to be of much help unless you actively monitor their effectiveness.

As important as it is to come up with a clever marketing campaign, it is equally essential to track its progress and see if it has the impact you thought it would. As a result, you need a social media campaign monitoring strategy to determine how your online actions perform and what you can do to make them more effective.

Read on to find out how you can carry out campaign monitoring and why it’s vital for your business.

How To Monitor Your Progress?

We can breakdown your social media campaign analytics into two types:

Campaign Metrics: These metrics track the effect of the particular campaigns you run
On-going Analytics: These help you monitor your daily activities over a period so you can see any changes in them or any increases in the engagement rates

Here’s the workflow you can follow to monitor your campaign’s effectiveness:

#1 Identify Your Objectives

Whether it is a research paper or a social media marketing campaign, any project requires a plan. You need to be clear about your objectives and why you want to go ahead with a specific campaign. Ask yourself: do you want to improve your brand awareness, increase your website’s traffic, or reach more people through your campaign?

It is best to have a SMART goal for all of your campaigns, which stands for:

Specific: Choose a social media platform to get started with
Measurable: Use an adequately defined trackable metric
Actionable: Set a realistic goal and one that you can accomplish
Relevant: A better engagement rate results in improved brand awareness
Time-bound: Set a time limit for achieving a goal

#2 Select The Appropriate Metrics

You can use several metrics to monitor the progress of your campaign as they give valuable insights. Use these to determine how to align your strategy with customer expectations and come up with better social media marketing strategies.

Mentions Volume

This metric is the number of times the keyword you choose to capture the essence of a particular campaign is mentioned by social media users. For instance, if you run your campaign on Twitter or Instagram, you can see all those public posts which used that specific hashtag. This can help you determine the reach of your message.

Post Sentiments

Every post generates some sentiment, be it positive or negative. This metric shows the attitude users have for your content, which can be negative, positive, or even neutral.

Post Reach

A metric that helps you determine the number of people your social media post has reached.

Influencer Score

This metric shows the people who talk about you and the impact your campaign has created.

Share of Voice

It is a percentage point that shows the impact of a social media post through the conversation it sparked on social media.

#3 Measure The Results Of Your Campaign

Once you have selected the particular metrics to track your social media campaign’s progress, you must use specific tools to capture and measure them. Sometimes, social media platforms have certain analytics you can use to measure your performance.

Other times, you have to rely on third-party tools or build your own with the help of software like API. You can do a simple Google search to figure out the tools you need for specific social channels if you’re not sure. One just tool is Mentionlytics.

#4 Set A Campaign Duration

Campaigns differ in their duration due to various reasons, including budgets and the time frames allowed for their implementation.

It is essential to understand the duration of your future campaign with the help of similar previously run campaigns. Additionally, when reviewing past campaigns, pay attention to ones that align with your current campaign goals, select them for the best comparison, and match the results from a similar time frame.

#5 Track And Report

It is essential to note that the raw data doesn’t give much insight. You need in-depth information or benchmarks to compare your performance with that of your competitors. Use your primary findings as a benchmark and keep your stakeholders in the loop with this information, so they review your results accordingly.

It is essential to consider the following:

If your numbers align with your expectations
How they compare with that of your competitors

As for your performance, it is best to report regularly, depending on your firm’s schedule. However, even if some meeting gets delayed due to scheduling conflicts, make sure you check your metrics regularly. With the accumulated data, compare old and new results to gauge any differences in your campaign performance.

Create a social media report using simple charts and graphs, as the visualization of results makes it easier for everyone to understand how your social media campaign is performing. Also, include any contextual information or benchmarks in that report, so it is easier to decipher the meaning of any figures.

As for the comparison with your competitors, you can easily do so with the help of social media analytics.

#6 Repeat The Process

After you have carried out the above steps, it is essential to analyze your results and adapt the effective metrics for upcoming campaigns. You can continuously improve your strategy towards a specific campaign by revising it according to new data.

The effort you put into monitoring and improving your campaigns will eventually prove beneficial when your website gets more traffic, you have more leads to follow, and your brand awareness increases.

Importance Of Campaign Monitoring

This goes without saying. Campaign monitoring helps determine how well your marketing strategies perform, not just for your sake but also because it is essential information for your stakeholders.

Here are some of the benefits of monitoring your social media campaign:

Understand Customer Behavior

Regardless of the industry you work in, it is essential to understand your target audience to cater to them accordingly and improve the chances of reaching your business goals.

Campaign monitoring allows you to observe, understand, and track customer behavior so you can determine which tactics get them to purchase more.

Use Effective Techniques

Once you understand the most effective techniques for your target audience, you can work on perfecting them to turn your happy customers into loyal ones. Additionally, you can also refine those strategies that didn’t do so well initially, so they might do better next time around.

Online Reputation

If you want to improve your social media presence, you have to maintain an excellent online reputation. When you constantly monitor your campaigns, taking in customers’ reactions and opinions, it shows that your brand is open-minded and flexible to adapt to changing needs.

This allows you to make better connections with people in the business and get new customers who can spread the word about your brand once they are satisfied.

There are certain times for each social media platform when it is best to post your content, as user activity is high at that time. You can use this information to time your campaigns and interact with the users through live sessions or Q/As about your current campaign, gathering real-time data on its performance.

Finance Management

Any marketing campaign and the extent of its monitoring depends on the financial investment put in it. When you effectively monitor the progress of your campaign, it becomes possible to determine if you have invested in the right strategy. If the answer’s no, it’s only natural to find other techniques that provide better results.

More Responsive

With real-time monitoring, you get valuable feedback for your strategies and reach out to social media users and respond to them live to keep the conversation going. This helps you improve user engagement as you can discover discussions about your brand through monitoring and join them to engage with your customers.

When you monitor actively, you can find out about a possible PR crisis and deal with it before it spreads like wildfire.

Ready For Social Media Campaign Monitoring?

This is the social media age, and you cannot get ahead of your competitors without tapping into it. However, it is essential to realize its true potential and use it accordingly.

Your social media marketing strategies are meant to achieve a business goal, such as increasing brand awareness or the number of leads. Monitor them actively and analyze the results you get to ensure their effectiveness.

Use this data to check the effectiveness of your campaigns and optimize your future ones. Determine what works best for your brand, what you can improve upon, and what you should let go of if something doesn’t add value to your business goals.

Originally posted on Mentionlytics: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/social-media-campaign-monitoring