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Your Digital Media Routine's End-of-Year Review
The Sprocket Report
You have been faithfully pursuing digital media marketing for your business all year. Or maybe you haven’t. Either way, it’s time to assess whether the results were worth your effort.
Too many small business owners and managers don’t know for sure if their digital media marketing works. Fortunately, there are a number of tools available for measuring activity on your website and social media platforms so you can plan marketing strategies for the year ahead. Here’s what you should be looking at:
The Past Year
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media platforms provide analytic reports for your accounts and Google Analytics measures your website. All of these are free to use and offer a ton of information, if you really want to dive deep.
For a very basic analysis, look at the past year, month by month. The expectation is that your reach and engagement steadily increased over the year. Since the intent of your social media marketing is to drive traffic to your website, compare your SMM reports to your Google Analytics to see if you are achieving that goal. In the two graphs below, you can clearly see that in the months when more people engaged on Facebook, there was much greater traffic on the website as well.
Comparing Specific Months
Next, compare each month of this last year with the same month of the previous year. Again, the expectation is that you are building a bigger customer base through your marketing efforts. The graph below includes November of both last year and this year, showing a marked improvement in website traffic during the same month in different years.
A month-to-month comparison of your social media platforms may be more difficult to interpret. As the novelty wore away and the number of messages ballooned, social media reach has been decreasing for years, even before the major changes this year on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Slight decreases could just be a re-set to today’s reality. Experts are still seeing value in social media, however, particularly for building brand relationships. If you are seeing improvement in your social media engagement, congratulations! You’re doing it right.
Annual Trends
Looking at more than just the past year is useful for spotting seasonal trends as well, as you can see in the graph below. Analyzing the trends will help you plan marketing campaigns in the coming year. You will know when to take advantage of months of high activity and when to put extra effort into the slow months.
Some folks find data reports tedious and confusing, but just a few simple charts can offer a ton of useful information. You may think you know what your digital marketing is doing, but the actual numbers may surprise you. Instead of wasting your time and budget on guesswork, take a quick look at your reports to plan for a successful year ahead.
Not sure where to find your reports or what to make of them? Contact us for a brief consultation. It’s what we do and we’re happy to help you so you’re free to focus on what you do.
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Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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