The Importance of Data – Now More Than Ever

May 28, 2020/by Stephen Padveen

Collecting Customer Data Can Significantly Improve Sales and Marketing Performance

As economies begin to reopen, it has become crystal clear that in the new landscape, business as we know it will look nothing like it did mere weeks ago.

Restaurants at 30% capacity. No fans at sporting events. Retail stores with limited foot traffic. Near empty shopping malls. A new set of consumer priorities and shopping patterns… The list goes on.

Faced with this new reality, there is one very significant action item that all businesses can and should enact which will help them build a foundation for growth and sustainability in the months and years ahead: Strategic Data Collection.

The Value of Data

Dun & Bradstreet’s 7th annual B2B Marketing Data Report (an excellent read, available at dnb.com) surveyed 500 businesses and uncovered some very interesting information that can be applied to virtually any business, of any size, in any industry.

The survey, conducted in November 2019, which means that the results are pre-COVID-19 but highly valuable nonetheless, found that 73% of companies are increasing their investment in quality data. It took seven years to get to this number but most mainstream businesses now realize the value of data and justification for expanded investment in data collection.

The study found that for companies that increased their investment in quality data, 100% experienced overall performance gains and 94% saw an improvement in sales and marketing performance. Of those that decreased their investment in data, 100% saw no improvement in sales and marketing, and 75% actually saw a decline in the performance of their sales and marketing initiatives.

Small Business or Enterprise – Put Data to Work

Quality data can contribute to corporate growth regardless of whether you manage a single retail location or an international consumer brand. However, activation of the data is where the actual monetization occurs and if the data you gather is sub-quality, your ability to trigger a positive impact on your businesses is hindered.

A business that gathers basic customer information such as an email address or a mobile number can be effective in the use of that data but expanding that data collection where possible into areas like customer interests, hobbies, travel patterns, and more, can lead to more informed and superior marketing initiatives when it comes to the targeting and timing of customized messaging to your audience. Data alone is important but the quality of the data you collect and its relevance to your business will play a key role in the effectiveness of making that data actionable.

What We Have Learned From eCommerce

Early on, eCommerce platforms understood the need to collect data at every conceivable touchpoint in the customer journey, a benefit of online business that traditional businesses and physical locations have been unable to match. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is the abandoned cart feature found on most e-cart platforms today.

An abandoned cart saver lets the retailer reconnect with the consumer pursuant to an incomplete transaction, in real-time. This action may occur through a pop up that says, “Hey, stick around and we’ll give you a 2 for 1 deal…” or a follow-up email that says, “Come back and we’ll give you an extra 20% off.“ According to Baymard.com, abandoned cart rates range from 60% to 80%. Online stores have the benefit of recovering 5% – 12% of these sales all through the use of abandoned cart technology. If physical retailers could do likewise and convert an extra 5% – 12% of every customer that walked into their stores it would have a huge impact on the bottom line.

However, physical retailers don’t typically have someone standing at the door with a 20% discount offer designed to keep a potential customer from leaving the store or as an incentive for the customer to provide them with personal data such as their name, phone number or email address. When you are about to walk out of a physical store without completing a transaction, the best you might hope to hear is ‘have a nice day’. Every customer that walks out is a data opportunity lost.

At the same time, that applies to every customer who actually completes a purchase in a physical location. Has the business collected relevant, quality data from the customer, or have they simply walked out the door after completing the transaction leaving the business with no way to reconnect with that customer?

Clearly, online businesses have a decided advantage when it comes to retaining the customer or gathering information through direct incentivization and it explains why in the current environment we can expect to see eCommerce stores look for ways to collect even more customer data.

What Can We Do As Marketers?

Marketers need to help retail (and online) clients create programs that incentivize customers to provide data that will help the business thrive. Obvious ones such as discounts, free services, contests, giveaways, and gift cards will all help customers provide the most basic of data that can help local businesses retain and attract new clients. But deeper, individual customization will become even more important as a tool to create loyalty among customers and visitors.

Inherent actions like emails offering standard discounts are a good first step. But to truly activate a higher rate of return on a basic email or similar outreach, a business wants to dive deeper into the offer customization process by collecting microdata such as customer preferences, interests, shopping habits, brand choices, and so on.

Personalizing the customer engagement with content that addresses the consumer experience at an individual level will become a much more critical component of the one-to-one marketing journey that customers are demanding, whether that be through a manual process or one driven by AI technologies.

Planning For the Road Ahead

Collecting data requires an additional commitment of resources at a time when most companies are simply focused on re-establishing a sense of normalcy.

Regardless of size, however, as businesses get back on their feet they need to start taking a much closer look at preparing and implementing a Strategic Data Collection plan that helps them better understand and connect with their clients at the most micro of levels.

The return will be well worth the time invested.

The Fallacy of Social Media ROI with No Investment (or “I”)

April 7, 2014/by Corey Padveen

The idea of generating social media ROI without investing in social media is a novel concept; that’s mostly because it is completely irrational.

One of the favorite sayings of economists is as follows: “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” Some attribute the adage to a practice that started in the Old West where patrons at saloons could receive a “free lunch” upon the purchase of a beer. This lunch, of course, would consist of salty ingredients, which in turn would lead to the patron buying several more drinks. (Why do you think there are peanuts, pretzels and popcorn given out for “free” at most bars?) From an economics point of view, the saying relates to hidden costs and externalities; even if you think something is free, there are economic costs that go into it.

This has been true in business for generations. So why do marketers and business owners now think that they can reap the benefits of the “free lunch” offered by social media marketing?

When it comes to running a social business, there are several costs that a corporation will incur. These can either be material costs – like ad spend – or immaterial costs – like adaptation time. All that to say is there are costs we need to consider when undertaking a social media initiative, and we need to accept that these costs are unavoidable if we wish to reap the benefits that social media can offer.

The four costs listed below are by no means the only ones that businesses will incur over the course of a social media campaign or program. That said, these are fairly standard, and businesses should be ready to factor them into the cost of doing (social) business.

Time

So often this is an investment that is quickly overlooked. It is hard to imagine why. What happened to the self-confidence of the average businessperson? Your time is an extremely valuable asset. Take it into serious consideration when determining the costs of running a social media program.

How much would you be making per hour if you were not toying away with Facebook marketing or writing your blog? Is the return going to justify how much time you are investing in these activities? Too often when calculating costs, individuals forget about all the time that needs to go into effectively executing a strategy. Give this cost serious consideration whether you are a one-person operation or a large organization.

Tools & Technologies

OK – this is an easy one. While some tools and/or technologies are free – generally those integrated into a social network or larger company, like Facebook Insights or Google Analytics – the majority of social media tools are standalone companies. That, of course, means that they need to make money in order to stay in business. So with the exception of a few, you are going to need to make an investment in tools.

With so much happening in the world of social media – and so much happening so fast – a tool can be a wonderful complement to a strategy. But the key thing to remember is that your tool is a complement, not the program. Though many technologies boast themselves as being the godsend application to rid you of all your social media woes, most simply offer a solution to one (or a select few) issues. You still need to put in the work.

Social Ad Spend

Another fairly simple one. But it is one that, again, is completely forgotten. Not because people do not realize that they have to invest in advertising, but because they think that they to not need social media advertising. This is a key component behind many brands having trouble finding success with social media. It also relates closely to the concept of the “free lunch” and the misconception of the true cost when it comes to investing in social media.

The Golden Age of social media marketing, where brands could generate huge awareness and boost sales without so much as a penny spent on ads is, sadly, dwindling. Of course, this is still possible – but only to an extent. Much like the tools discussed above, networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are businesses. These businesses all have (hugely inflated) valuations and need to find a way to justify those price tags to investors. The answer? Charge businesses to access their huge reservoir of potential clients. This is why we are seeing things like the near-extinction of Facebook organic reach. Brands are going to have to pay-to-play. There is still a tremendous amount of potential when it comes to social media marketing. You’ll just have to invest in advertising in order to reap that social media ROI.

Adaptation

Much like time, adaptation is an oft-overlooked cost that businesses will have to incur whether they notice it or not. Transitioning into a social business is no easy feat. It requires dedication, perseverance, and perhaps most of all, willingness to change. Social business is not business as usual; it is a whole new way of conducting yourself in the marketplace.

Image Credit: Shutterstock. Used under license.

This is something that takes time to adjust to and that time needs to be factored into your costs. The decision to become a social business is a smart one, but one that needs to be undertaken methodically so that you do not become overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done. Figure out what you know and what you need to learn based on the goals of your strategy, and determine the cost of adapting to this new way of doing business.

Conclusion

One of the greatest values of running a social business is that virtually everything is measurable; while some criticize traditional operations for its lack of exactitude, every last detail can be attributed in social thanks in large part to big data. What’s more, communications and overall business costs are reduced as a result of becoming an effective social business. That said, there are still costs, and we can’t forget that costs are a natural part of doing business. Don’t be afraid of the “I” in ROI – that is what is going to generate the “R”.

What other costs have you noticed when it comes to running a social business? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How to Look at Post Details on Facebook [VIDEO]

January 17, 2014/by Corey Padveen

Your post details on Facebook can give you some tremendous insights into the success of your Facebook marketing.

When it comes to marketing on Facebook, the network has come a long way. That’s not surprising, considering it is now a public company and needs to provide value to the businesses that use it.

That said, Facebook is constantly going through changes – some more drastic than others – and it is not always easy to keep up.

One of the great features that Facebook provides for marketers is the ability to look at post details on Facebook to see exactly what your audience is doing when they come across and engage with your content.

Superficially, it’s a simple feature. But when you tie it into some of the great data that Facebook Insights provides, it can be extremely valuable.

Have a look at the video below and see for yourself why the ability to look at your post details on Facebook can be a great asset when marketing your brand on the world’s largest social network.

4 Social Media Campaigns to Test this Holiday Season

November 19, 2013/by Corey Padveen

As the holidays approach, you need to find a way to leverage social media campaigns to boost your presence in the market.

Every brand is vying for the attention of consumers as we approach the holiday season and year-end. So what can you do to stand out? This year, why not take advantage of the benefits offered by social media campaigns?

Below are four very simple and potentially lucrative ideas for social media campaigns that your company should invest in this holiday season. The holidays are all about bringing people together, and what better place to do that than on social media (with the exception of home, of course)!

Holiday Pin-To-Win

People love pin-to-win campaigns on Pinterest. They allow people to express themselves creatively and share their pinspiration with a large audience. If you have an active social audience and are part of a visual industry, consider hosting a pin-to-win campaign on Pinterest!

There are a lot of easy ways to run these types of campaigns. You can either host the campaign yourself, or use a software provider like Woobox.

Facebook Holiday Offer

Have you ever created an offer on Facebook? For brands with a physical presence, offers can be of great value. If you add a theme to your offer – in this case, the holidays – it can be even more beneficial. People love the idea of specials and savings during the holidays. After all, the season is expensive enough as it is. If you show your fans and followers that you are giving them a way to save this year, they will certainly appreciate that.

With the right offer designed for your fans, you can certainly expect the returns on your investment in boosting that offer to a wider audience to be very high.

Promoted Holiday Tweets

If you have created a landing page for a holiday ebook, service or special, or simply want to attract new followers by appealing to their holiday spirit, then promoting specific tweets with a holiday motif will certainly give your Twitter marketing a boost.

Target specific users and interests on Twitter and share your content to increase clicks to your pages and conversions from a targeted audience.

Promote Holiday Pins

Have you seen or used the new promoted pin feature on Pinterest? Yes, the photo-sharing network has gone the way of Facebook and Twitter and begun allowing advertisers to promote their content. Just in time for the holidays!

Try promoting pins with embedded links to your website that follow a holiday motif. This can be your marketing experiment this holiday season.

These are just a few social media campaigns you can consider launching this year.

Can you think of other social media campaigns that might generate high returns during the holidays? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How Much Does Social Media Cost?

November 13, 2013/by Corey Padveen

It is a misguided question often asked: “How much does social media cost?”

We hear it all the time. As marketers, a lot of us have even asked it or are asking it now. The question, “How much does social media cost?” is one that has surged in popularity as of late, but anyone who actively operates a social business knows why it is somewhat misguided.

So what makes the question misguided? The nature of asking why it is misguided might lead us to think that we are going to be given some convoluted, pseudo-existential response, but the fact is that it is quite simple. The question, “How much does social media cost?” is misguided because of the simple use of the term, ‘social media’.

What’s wrong with the term ‘social media’?

The buzzword on the tips of everybody’s tongue is ‘social media’. We know that it resonates when we talk to clients, and we bring it up because we know that clients expect to hear about it. While the media type is important, we have to step away from the term and look at the words and what they mean.

Social is self-explanatory. It is something that connects people. But media is plural. So basically, when we take a step back, we are saying, “How much does it cost to connect with people in different ways?” Now we’re getting somewhere.

What should the question be?

Now that we know that using the term ‘social media’ is misleading, we need to ask ourselves what the proper question is. We need to ask ourselves, “What is the cost of running a social business?”

A page on Facebook, boards on Pinterest and a Twitter account might look good, and they might be ‘free’ to create (if you don’t count the time it takes to create them) but what is the overhead of running a social business? This is where you have to think of ‘social media’ as more than a few networks – it is the new way of conducting business.

What is the cost of running a social business?

First of all, we need to stop thinking of social as MySpace, Friendster, Facebook and subsequent networks. Yes, these were new ways of connecting people, but the concept of social selling was nothing new. Blogs and email, even your website, were the original forms of social media; hubs in which people could connect. So what does it cost to apply that approach to your entire business?

First look at what departments are going to go social. If you are going to transition your customer service onto social channels – a more cost-effective, time-efficient and customer preferred way of doing business – how much will it cost per issues handled? Determine how much work will exist, how many people it will take to handle it and how much it will cost to employ those people. (NOTE: You might be the sole proprietor of your business. That’s great! But don’t sell yourself short. Your time is very valuable, and you need to figure out what your opportunity cost is to handling these facets of your business on your own.)

Most people are not looking at bus benches. They are spending hours a day looking at Facebook. They are sifting through billions of pieces of content on Twitter. They are conducting Google searches and clicking on results. They are looking for jobs on LinkedIn. You might hope to drive traffic organically. But these social channels need to make money, too. You are going to need to invest in your social business to see returns.

Advertising on social media is still young enough that it is affordable. Take advantage of that. Create highly customized ads that target your ideal candidates. Drive people to your website with your ads, or grow your brand’s market presence. Determine your budgets, as you have in the past, and test them to see what works.

There is no magic button or single answer. You might hear about a video that goes viral and figure, “I can do that, too!” You can try. But you might be sorely disappointed. Your social business is going to take a serious commitment, an investment and a new way of thinking.

So, how much does social media cost? Social media is your new business. It is not a standalone tool. Do not simply throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Take social seriously and invest appropriately.

Have you developed a Social Business Plan? See how t2 can help you put one together here.

Where have you invested most in your social business? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How to Measure ROI on Facebook in 3 Easy Steps [VIDEO]

November 9, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Measuring ROI on Facebook is essential to knowing the success of your program, and it is much easier than you think.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here.

The Power of Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]

November 4, 2013/by Corey Padveen

We all know that social media is important, but have you really considered the power of social media for your business?

We’ve said it countless times before, and the evidence can be found all over: the power of social media is great, and leveraging the platform properly can mean big things for your brand.

There are a lot of very interesting statistics in this infographic from Buzzsmith. Every year, new data emerges that supports the adoption of large-scale social media strategies, and this year is no different. If we look at some of the data in the infographic below, we can see that, unsurprisingly, ROI is the major focal point for most marketers and businesses. This has long been the case. In order to justify the very real cost that social media incurs, we need to be able to measure ROI from social media. Considering this, we can see which statistic is most interesting of the data below.

For those brands effectively measuring ROI (and there are a number of ways to measure it tangibly) they are seeing a 153% return on their investment into social media campaigns! This further exemplifies the great power of social media.

What campaigns have you run that evoke the power of social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How to Determine KPIs on Social Media

November 1, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Understanding your brand’s KPIs on social media is going to be crucial to measuring the success of your program.

ROI remains one of the key concerns for marketers and executives alike when it comes to social media marketing. While there exist a number of ways to measure your returns on social campaigns, few marketers know where to look in order to find them. The first place to start is by establishing your KPIs on social media – they are going to be invaluable down the road.

Think about it: how can you know if you are successful, if you do not know what your measurement for success is going to be? For those that do not know what KPI stands for, these are Key Performance Indicators, and they vary from brand to brand.

There are a few steps you are going to need to take in order to determine your KPIs for social media. Below is the set of steps to follow in order to figure out what, exactly, you plan on using as a criteria for success with social media efforts.

Establish Your Goals

Before you can determine how you want to measure your returns, you need to know what you want to accomplish. As it states above, KPIs are going to vary from business to business. Of course there will be some that are fairly general, and observed by almost everyone. But to know what you want to be measuring, you need to know what is going to contribute to achieving your goals.

There are a few goals your brand might have. Maybe you want to increase brand awareness, or drive direct sales. Maybe it is something in between those two. Whatever it is, you need to start by establishing your short and long term goals.

Understand Insights

When it comes to social media, insights are going to come in all shapes and sizes. They can also be assisted by tools and technologies. When looking at KPIs, you are going to need to sift through quite a bit of data. Conventionally, the top-down approach to measuring KPIs started with your goals and simply looked at the processes that led to results as the KPIs. This is not the case with social (well, not entirely the case). While you are going to be looking at processes as KPIs, you are also going to be looking at a number of other resources. Enter insights.

Know where your insights exist both on and off social networks. Look at your activity on Facebook Insights, and compliment that with data collected in Google Analytics. Knowing where all of your data is being collected (and yes, all of your data is being collected) is going to be extremely useful when determining your KPIs and where you can find them.

Simplicity is Not a Bad Thing

Sometimes, the simplest answer is going to be the best. Measuring your return on investment does not have to be some convoluted set of equations that generate a mysterious, variable-filled result. You can look at some of your more simple KPIs and find a whole lot of value.

Something as simple of your number of interactions – a hard, straightforward number – can be an extremely valuable KPI and you shouldn’t go out of your way to complicate things.

Some Helpful Starting Points

When it comes to KPIs on social media, there are going to be some standard ones. No matter what you are trying to achieve, you will ultimately want to keep at least a few of these in mind.

Cost-per-lead/conversion: You have to spend money to make money and social media is no different. Pay attention to how much you are investing in every one of your conversions in order to ensure that you are profitable.
Engagement: Look at how often your fans are interacting with your brand in order to see if your content strategy is successful. If you are talking to no one, how can you expect to drive any business from social media?
Referral traffic: This relates closely to your engagement KPI. How often is your content leading to users visiting your website? What types of content are leading to users visiting your website, or finding landing pages?
Network growth: It might seem trivial, but a lot of people tend to overlook the value of a large network. Whether that is an email database, a group of Twitter followers, or followers on your company’s LinkedIn page, a growing network can have a lot of value if leveraged correctly.

What KPIs are you using to track your work on social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Intelligence Says To Invest in a Social Advertising Campaign

October 30, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media is not free; if you want to succeed, you need to be prepared to invest in a social advertising campaign.

Have you made the mistake of thinking that social media is ‘free’? You’re not alone. Plenty of people – marketers and businesspeople alike – have made the dangerous mistake of assuming that because you can create an account or page on a social network for free – from a financial investment perspective – that succeeding with the platform is going to be free as well. If you want to find success with social media, you need to be prepared to invest in a social advertising campaign.

Recently, Adobe released their Q3 Social Intelligence Report. In it, they outlined a lot of very interesting details. For example, people are beginning to engage more. Although brands only increased their post number by 9% year-over-year, engagement has jumped up 115% in the same time period.

Though despite all of these interesting stats, there was one point that stood out above the rest: paid social is on the rise. There were a few ways in which the report made this clear.

We have found ourselves at a wonderful point in time (as marketers and advertisers) where the world’s largest network is trying to justify it’s price tag. So, economically speaking, how do you increase demand? Why, you decrease price, of course!

A few of the key findings below show why now is the time to invest in a social advertising campaign and reap major benefits.

CPC and CTRs

The cost-per-click (CPC) for ads on Facebook has gone down considerably in the last year – down by 40%, to be exact. Meanwhile, click-through rates on Facebook ads (CTR) have gone up by a whopping 275%! By creating an optimized ad and sharing to the right people in the right places, you could reap some major benefits from the advertising platform.

CPM and ROI

The cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for Facebook ads has increased. And understandably so – there are over a million sets of a thousand users you can reach out to. That said, targeting capabilities have become increasingly specific in the last year and as a result, measured return on investment (ROI) has seen a jump of 58% in the last year. So, while it might be more expensive to reach large numbers of people, if you pick your audience properly, you can see significant returns.

Click Volume and Impressions Growth

Great news advertisers! As ads become more prevalent on the network, so do impressions (naturally) and clicks (interesting!). That’s right, people are clicking on sponsored ads as they become more frequent. So you might hear people say they don’t want to see any advertising on their favorite social network, but if it is done correctly, you can expect that they will not only accept it, but click on it.

Now is the time to capitalize on the returns that can be generated from Facebook’s huge network of users. Your brand should not let this opportunity fall by the wayside. You can and should strongly consider investing in a social advertising campaign today. Find out how t2 can help here.

There are a lot more great facts and figures that marketers might find interesting in this study. Which one do you think is most important or interesting? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

The 5 Most Important Social Media Metrics

October 18, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What are the most important social media metrics you need to measure in order to analyze the success of your social media marketing?

There is plenty that we can measure when it comes to our social media marketing efforts. It is crucial to know what the most important social media metrics are when measuring the success of your campaigns.

While there are a lot of important social media metrics, there are five listed below that are not only the most pertinent, but the most widely applicable. Every one of these metrics can be measured on every network, regardless of campaign you are running.

Campaign Reach

You want to know how many eyes landed on your content. If a tweet falls in the social media forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it still have an impact? Monitoring how far your content reaches is going to be important for a few reasons (some of which are discussed below). First, you want to know what types of content resonate with your audience. Second, you should be paying attention to the audience with whom it resonates.

The concept of Responsive Branding is geared towards monitoring your most active demographics and creating campaigns that appeal to them. Keeping an eye on your campaign’s reach – either using free insights on your network, effective tools or Google Analytics – is going to be key to doing that.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Links are among the most popular bits of content we share. We want to know that people are clicking on them and where we are seeing the most clicks.

Use a link shortening service, like Hootsuite or Bitly in order to monitor the click-throughs on your content. The great thing about these shorteners is that every click is recorded, and you can see trends, where clicks are originating from and modify your strategies accordingly. Knowing where and when people are clicking makes it a lot easier to cut out the unnecessary parts of your program. (I refer you, again, to the ‘tweet falling in a forest’ metaphor above.)

Content Engagement

This is more about optimizing your content strategy and less about the popular yet somewhat vague notion of measuring ‘engagement’. After all, we hear about monitoring and measuring your engagement rates all the time, but what does that really mean? What is a ‘good’ engagement rate? Generalizing the concept will mean some brands, that are doing an excellent job at achieving their own goals, are deemed to be failing when it comes to engagement. Monitoring your engagement on social platforms has much more to do with your content strategy than anything else.

Of course, you are going to want to engage with your audience on every one of your channels. People are talking and you should be talking back. But more important than that, you should be listening. Listen to both what they are saying and why. Why are they sharing their input on one piece of content over another? Why does one video have double the views as your others? Look at engagement as a guide in optimizing your content strategy and it will be a much more valuable metric.

Social Conversion

This is where we start to focus on some of more important social media metrics for economic returns. When people are clicking through to the landing page of your links on social channels, are they converting? What networks are driving the most conversion?

By setting up goals (funnels) in Google Analytics or installing Conversion Tracking on a network like Facebook, you will be able to see exactly where people are coming from, where they are going and what they are doing when they get to your website. Ultimately, the idea is to ensure that people convert in some way or another. This can be by downloading a white paper, registering for an event, signing up on the newsletter, or making a purchase. The important thing is that you want to see what actions are being taken in order to eliminate the waste from your social media program and, once again, optimize your strategy in order to only promote the most successful content and links to the channels that drive the highest returns.

Brand Perception

What is being said about your brand on social media? Reputation management is a crucial part of your overall social marketing strategy. People are talking all over the world. They might be talking to your brand or simply talking about your brand, but you want to have your ear to the (social) ground in order to know what they are saying and how your brand is being perceived.

You can use tools like Mention or Radian6, or simply monitor your brand mentions on Twitter. The idea, however, is to know what people are saying in order to avoid a misperception about your brand leading to your downfall.

There are a lot of important social media metrics, but these five need to be top of mind whenever you are putting together a campaign. They are going to tell you what is working and help you optimize your campaigns in order to not only drive brand awareness, but increase sales and perceived reputation of your brand by your fans.

What are some other important social media metrics? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!