Developing a global social media strategy is a great way to start connecting with audiences worldwide. But if you can’t measure your strategy’s impact, you won’t know if it’s a success—or missing something.
Global social media reporting collects all the data on how your brand’s channels perform across your target markets.
Read on to discover how global social media reporting provides crucial insights, what to include in a report and specific key performance indicators (KPIs) you should watch out for.
Why you can’t ignore global social media reporting
You’ve built an amazing global social media strategy. You’re confident it will reach and connect with audiences in multiple markets. But how do you prove that it’s working?
Global social media reporting is the process of collecting and analyzing the data from a brand’s social media channels to understand how they’re performing. This process relies on tracking KPIs.
There are many KPIs—from likes/reactions to calculating the value of a paid ad.
See also: How to set up a design workflow for global social media accounts
Why are these key performance indicators important?
You can’t determine how your content is performing without evaluating specific indicators.
Social media data mining can assist in addressing the following questions:
- What demographics of people are engaging with us?
- When/what time of day are people looking at our content?
- What types of content (videos, images, etc.) or subjects are our audiences most interested in?
- What hashtags are our audience engaging with?
Successful global brands know that it’s not enough to post content regularly. It’s important that content is localized for consumers in their language, dialect and cultural tone—and that the content is performing in line with the goals of your global social media strategy.
See also: How to design a global social media strategy that gets results
What to include in a global social media report
Here are three umbrellas that most KPIs fall under:
- Reach. How many people see or could see your social media posts/accounts?
- Engagement. How many social media users are interacting with your posts/accounts?
- Conversion. How many people are going further into the marketing funnel and completing a desired action, like purchasing a product or reading an article?
What you include in your global social media report depends on your business goals. For example, are you looking to expand a region’s awareness of your brand? Focusing on reach might be more useful than focusing on anything else.
But if your goal is to gain 10 sales conversions each month, then reach might not matter as much as high conversion rates. In that case, your focus might be less on engagement and more on having strong calls to action in each post.
Even among one brand’s channels, the strategy might vary. What goals a brand has for a channel that’s only a year old might be very different for one that’s over a decade old.
Likewise, what you expect from a local account in a new foreign market should differ from your accounts in your native market.
The bottom line: a brand’s yearly targets should vary for each social media platform.
See also: 10 reasons to run social media in different languages
VeraContent case study: How PopSockets used their global social media insights
When PopSockets decided to expand their localization efforts into new European markets, they called upon VeraContent to pool together a team of skilled social media professionals with native expertise in their local regions.
We tapped into our network of vetted community managers to adapt PopSocket campaigns, run regional social media accounts and report valuable insights.
“They take care of the creative copywriting, engage with the community, and give a lot of qualitative insights about the audience. I regularly have a call with each of the community managers, and one of my questions is: How did people react when we posted this piece of content, and why? Is there any trend or pattern?”
– Pierre-Antoine Colonna, EMEA social media marketing manager at PopSockets
The result was huge boosts in quality engagement and traffic to PopSocket’s website, smashing their yearly targets and lending to the 200 million items the brand sold worldwide in 2019.
Here are some KPIs from our collaboration:
- PopSockets EMEA boosted their follower count by over 100%, becoming the fastest-growing region for the brand after the US.
- They received over four times as many partner requests from local influencers—an important metric for the brand.
- In their primary EMEA market, Germany, they were tagged in twice as many monthly photos than in January 2019.
Their global social media reporting gave a full picture of the success following their partnership with our agency, but it also gave specific exposure to how they accomplished their goals of increased user-generated content and partner requests.
This was an important insight because they’re a phone-accessories brand focused on expressing individual style.
See also: How a localized social media strategy propelled PopSockets to success in Europe
15 global social media KPIs that really help shape your strategy
It’s clear that the KPIs you measure depend on your business goals.
But there are some foundational global social KPIs that we recommend every brand evaluate and keep track of. These can tell you a lot about your channels’ performance and ultimately help shape your strategy.
For global social media reporting tools, we recommend Google Analytics or Hootsuite Analytics.
Here are the global social media KPIs we recommend keeping an eye on, sorted by type:
#1. KPIs to track for reach
1. Post reach. How many people are seeing your content? Remember that localization factors, like time zones, can affect a post’s total reach.
Note: post reach is different from impressions. Impressions are the number of times all users have seen your post, but it doesn’t count unique users. This means one social media user could see your post four times. Meanwhile, reach only counts unique users.
2. Followers. Sometimes this falls under a different category of KPI called “community growth.” However you think of it, follower growth and total follower count can tell you a lot about what traction your channel is getting.
3. Share of voice. This KPI measures how often your content is mentioned on social media and compares that to your competitors.
#2. KPIs to track for engagement
4. Likes. Likes are a great way to see positive interactions with a post.
5. Comments. Comments show people are engaged, but remember that comments aren’t necessarily always positive. While the number of comments is useful, we always recommend taking stock of what people say during a social media audit.
6. Shares. Do people connect with the content enough to redistribute it or put it on their own timeline/feed?
7. Amplification rate. How many people are sharing your content in relation to your followers?
8. Mentions. When people are mentioning/tagging your brand, they start a unique conversation. PopSockets’s monthly tags more than doubled in Germany following their partnership with VeraContent—a sign that their community managers were increasingly engaging their audience.
9. Profile visits. How often do people visit your brand’s social media profile?
10. Influencer partner requests. How many influencers want to collaborate with your brand? How many followers do they have, and are they from your target audience?
11. Video completion rates. Similar to video views, this KPI tells you how many people watch until the end of your videos. If they’re watching until the end, it’s a good indication that you’re doing something right.
“Social media managers often focus on impressions, but impressions don’t necessarily indicate engagement. Real engagement is fascinating and comes in numerous levels. The first level–and the simplest one–is liking. The next would be retweeting or reposting. The third level is commenting—and comments are a massive form of engagement.”
– Alaric Moras, global social media strategist at Dassault Systèmes
#3. KPIs to track for conversion
12. Click-through rate (CTR). This is the number of people who saw your post and clicked the call-to-action (CTA) included. For example: a community manager creates an Instagram post with a link to a full blog article. The amount of people who click on the link is the CTR.
13. Conversions. The number of monthly active users going through the marketing funnel’s next step. This could mean buying a product, but it could also be downloading a template or signing up for an email newsletter.
14. Bounce rate. The percentage of visitors who followed your CTA and quickly left the page without taking any action. Ideally, this rate should be low—if you have a high bounce rate, it could signal the content isn’t properly engaging your audience, or your CTA is misleading.
15. Cost per click (CPC). If you’re running sponsored social media posts, this KPI will let you know if your spending is worth it. As the name indicates, it measures the cost per individual click on a paid ad.
With these KPIs, you’ll gather a strong picture of your audience base, what they like and how your content engages them—or not. We recommend breaking down these global social media analytics by your target regions or markets.
Remember, other KPIs could be useful for your team, like those measuring customer loyalty or resolved issues. Studies show that customers are more willing to buy from and recommend a brand after a positive interaction.
See also: Leveraging social media data to make marketing decisions
Get the most out of your global social media accounts
Developing a great global social media strategy is one thing, but ensuring it’s working is an ongoing process that can be overwhelming. That’s why working with a global social media agency can help.
At VeraContent, we empower brands to not only create an informed social media strategy for their local and global accounts, we also help run them.
Get in touch with us to learn more about how we could help and see if you qualify for a free content consultation today.
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