Social Media Value: Why it’s important and What to Measure

Recently, I bought a dress from an online company. Now this was no ordinary dress. I was able to customize the sleeves, neckline, and hemline. I input each measurement into the online form, which required some standing on one foot and wrestling with a tape measure. After a wait of a few weeks, the dress arrived. And wow! It was incredible, fit like a glove, and was beautiful. Not just because of the embroidery, but the fabric was soft and sturdy. The hems were well stitched, and you could see that the overall the quality was there.

Why am I telling you this story?

Social media can be a lot like that dress. You might pay extra for a good logo, avatar, or headshot, and devote extra time writing your profile, but ultimately it’s worth it. Sometimes it’s difficult to judge the value of a social media account, but there are ways. I haven’t written about this for awhile, but I believe it’s good to review what makes for good social media value. In fact, here’s an article from the Wayback Machine: Creating an Awesome Twitter Avatar. Can you believe it’s from 2012?

Your social media banner should be eye catching

If you have a banner, it should have good balance. It should catch the eye and leave a good first impression. It should definitely be in focus and easily identifiable. By the way, here are some beautiful Twitter banners from Canva. Looking at other social media headers can give you an idea of what you’d like yours to look like. And one pro tip? Make your avatar and banners easy to identify across all your social media accounts. That way, when people travel from Facebook to Instagram to Twitter, they can easily identify you and your brand.

A well-written profile creates good visibility

Does your profile say something about you, what you do, and what’s important to you? And do you change it up occasionally? Or do the things that you’ve said stay the same year after year? Sometimes they do stay the same. Brands may keep the same messaging, but change their logos, for instance. On a personal profile, it’s good to review your profile every year or so. New Year is a good time to do that. Neil Patel has an excellent article about the 10 elements of a successful social media profile.

High-quality posts determine your survivability

Sharing from other pages or accounts is a good way to create engagement. When you share, other people are more prone to share your posts, too. And don’t forget that commenting is a good way to create engagement. People will follow you and share your posts and your account will survive if you post and share. How do you measure it? I like a ratio of 80:20 of shared posts versus original content. It’s pretty simple, but it works.

Measure What Works

Don’t forget to measure what’s working for you. Among some of the things you might like to measure? Although follower count is a vanity metric to some extent, I think it’s important to have a few followers. You don’t want to be talking to yourself, after all.

Different Platform, Different Analytics

Facebook has its own set of analytics, as does Twitter. For Instagram and Pinterest, you need business accounts to see your analytics. Although engagement can be difficult to measure correctly, look at your best posts and see what’s working. Impressions is a measure that some really like. I like checking about once a month, although some like to check more often. Reach is another measure that you might like to check. I won’t go into a lot of details here, but you can use a spreadsheet to track these.