Welcome to Episode 396 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
We’re covering one of my favorite topics today: numbers. That’s right. Okay. So not like numbers in math. I was never a big fan of math. But numbers as in the results from your social media marketing efforts.
Two reasons why I want to talk about this.
One, if you don’t have any concept of what your numbers are if you don’t have any tools in place to track the results of your marketing time, it’s going to end up being a colossal waste of your time. Because you’re not making informed choices, and you may be spending time in all the wrong places. Instead, we want to make sure we’re using that information to make educated assumptions about where we want to bob and weave for the marketing.
Number two. It gets so much easier to be consistent when you know doing A will equal B. So if I know doing a Facebook Live is going to result in x, y, z new sign ups for the trial on Backstage, it gets a whole lot easier for me to go, “You know what, I’m going do a Facebook Live today.” Or if I know that doing this podcast results in x, y, z new sign-ups to the email list, so again, a whole lot easier for me to sit my butt down and record this podcast.
So that’s why I love this stuff. But here’s the deal. A lot of people who are listening to the show are not going to have any sort of data measurement in place. And, even worse, some of the people who are listening to the show and have no data stuff in place, are paying for Facebook ads. Are paying someone to manage their social media. And they have no idea what’s working.
They have no idea if creating content on Instagram is driving traffic to their sales page. If creating content on LinkedIn is driving new sales calls. They just don’t know. And so you’re spending a lot of money, and you’re spending a lot of time with something that is completely unmonitored.
Let that really sink in. That’s why we’re having this conversation today. And that’s what we’re going to dig into. We’re going to talk about specifically what kind of metrics I want you to look at. We’re going to talk about why this is not something we’re measuring moment to moment. And I’m going to share a couple of my favorite tools. So stay around for the whole show. Also at the very end of the show I’m going to tell you something very cool we’re doing in the next couple of weeks to celebrate a little. Because something big is happening, guys. Something very big.
Also, I want to remind you. I’m hoping you’re one of the fantastic people who listen to this episode pretty quickly after it comes out. Be aware. Thursday, the 12th of April, that’s two days from today. This episode is live. So we’re doing a live training, really expanding on this topic. So if you’re listening to this and it’s already after the 12th and we already did the training, it’s still worth going to watch the replay. Because the replay is going to be all of the content you need. But the benefit of joining us live is that you can ask me questions pertinent to your content, to your decision, to your efforts, to your ideal clients. I get feedback. So join us. Hitthemicbackstage.com if you are not yet a member, if you are a member, look in your inbox, there’s a link to the call. You’re already on the inside, baby.
So let’s get started.
Number one thing I want to talk about.
Measuring your data is about more than your likes.
It’s interesting to me. We’ve opened up the doors of BAM again and we’ve still got a couple of spots as of recording this episode. Email me and find out if we still have them. The first conversation I have with BAM members after they join. We have our initial call and it’s fascinating to me how often I open a call and I ask them, “How is your Facebook page?” “Oh, well, I have 1000 likes on my page.” “Awesome. So do those people do anything on your page?” Like that is not a metric. That is not something that is going to help us see if you are getting sales, or leads, or conversations, from those folks. Or if they’re even seeing anything. Or engaging in any way.
And so what you’ve got to, got to, got to do is take that back a little bit and look beyond the likes. Go into you Insights, go into your Google Analytics, look and see what kind of traffic is being driven, where they’re landing from Facebook. That’s the information you want to have.
The thing I love about Facebook, I’ll be honest, is I can get a ton of data right there on Facebook. You don’t need a fancy expensive third party tool. You can get a ton of data from Facebook. I don’t know that I should say that that particular way right now because it’s a lot of controversy happening around data and Facebook at the moment. But you can get a lot of information about how people are engaging with the page, how people are responding to content.
I highly, highly, highly recommend you be looking at where are they spending their time. What kind of content are they consuming on your page? Are they watching your live videos? All of that stuff. If they’re watching your videos, how long are they watching for? That’s the kind of content we want to be paying attention to when we start looking at you metrics. Not just how many people liked the page. Or how many people follow you on Twitter. Or how many people follow you on Instagram.
We’ve got to put some context with that information because everything else, the likes, the subscribers, the followers, those are vanity metrics. They make us feel really good. But trust me when I say there’s no value in that number. There’s value in how many of those people are actually engaging. How many of those people are actually consuming your content. How many of those people are actually spending a little time on your website clicking around. And how many of those people are actually becoming customers.
That’s where you’re metrics matter. That’s where your data matters. And that’s where you’re going to get real information you can do something with. So when I’m talking about this, I want you to look past the likes. I want you to be looking at things like engagement; time spent on site; how many pages on your website they’re visiting; new versus return visitors on your website; how long they’re watching your videos on Facebook; how consistently they’re watching your stories; or where they’re falling off in your stories for Instagram; what kind of viewer retention you have when we’re talking about YouTube.
Obviously, I’m sort of jumping around from network to network because it depends on where you’re spending your time. But you’ll see the theme here really is about consumption over they just like the page; they just subscribe to the podcast; they just subscribe to the YouTube channel; they just followed me on Instagram. We’re looking at where they’re spending their time; where they’re engaging; where they’re connecting. That’s what matters most.
And for my money how often they’re going from there to my site. That’s got to, got to, got to be a part of what you’re looking at. Otherwise, what’s the point? You are not building a community on Instagram because you really want to support Instagram as a platform. No. You’re doing it because ultimately you want to convert those people into customers. That’s why you’re providing the value there.
That means you need to be paying attention to how often are we getting them away from Instagram and onto your site. Now obviously not every single thing we put out. That’s the point. That’s the message. That’s the process. We are obviously nurturing them where they are as well, but ultimately we need to be doing something to get them off the social network and onto our site. All right? So pay attention to that.
Number two thing I want to talk about is this is a long term game.
Do not be looking at these metrics every eight minutes. This is a mistake I made when I launched the podcast. I was obsessed with download numbers, and I would look at them. I would refresh and refresh and refresh. Did someone else listen? Did someone else listen? And just watched it sort of tick by, one listener, two listeners, five listeners, ten downloads, eight downloads. Whatever it is. It’s easy when you get into metrics.
The same thing happens with Facebook ad campaigns. It’s easy when you get into these metrics to want to watch them obsessively. There’s no value in that. Now, you don’t want to get too far from it. I’m not saying check in on it once a quarter. But I dig into my metrics deep once a month. And really deep once a quarter. And a little bit every week. So if I have something specific I’m doing, like running a new ad campaign where we’re testing a new audience, I’m going to check in on that every four or five days.
On the flip side, if we’re running a campaign we’ve been running forever, I’m going to check on it maybe ever other week just to make sure it’s still working. When we’re talking about launching a new episode of this podcast, I check those numbers once a month. Seriously. When I do a monthly review, that’s as often as I check my downloads anymore.
Now if I … We’re testing some new things with Facebook Live We’re going to be relaunching Hit the Mic TV, which is something I’m going to talk more about in just a minute. But in doing that I’m going to be paying attention to those view numbers a little more closely initially. We’ve been really watching some of our numbers around how I’ve been doing Facebook Live over that last couple of months to make sure we’re really zoning in on times, and dates, and where I want to do this Facebook Live in my calendar so that as we resurrect the show we know where to best position it, where it best place it so it serves you and also serves my schedule to be honest with you. Because that’s a factor.
So I really encourage you to look at what’s top of mind, what you’re working on right now. New Facebook ad campaigns. New content strategies. New email strategies. Look at those absolutely once a week. On the other hand some stuff that you’ve been doing for a while it’s going to be fine monthly. And then we dig really deep once quarter – again, we’re going to talk about this on Thursday – as we’re looking at what were our goals; what was our executables; and how did those things go for a quarter; and how can we use that information to make better decisions in the next quarter so that we are, again, building on a foundation of knowledge, educated assumptions, educated guesses if you will.
My son’s a big science guy. So the proper hypothesis if necessary. But information is critical to get that educated guess. To get that hypothesis. So that’s where I want you to think about this being a long term thing. This is not something you’re going to be obsessing over. Nor is it something you’re going to get results from the moment you hit “post”. The moment you hit “publish”. The moment you hit “go live”. It’s going to take time. That’s the nature of it.
I want to wrap it up talking a little bit about tools.
I have a couple of tools I highly recommend, one of which is free. Google Analytics. If you do not have Google Analytics set up on your website seriously, for realsy, pause this show, go do that. It’s the most important thing you’re going to do. If you don’t know how to do it, come to us Backstage and ask and I will show you because it’s critical.
Also the social media networks all have analytics built in. I also really love a tool called Hotjar. It is actually going to show you Heatmaps on your website so you can see where you’re losing content or losing people. This is really valuable on your landing pages, your sales pages, things like that. But I actually really like it on content pages too, because it gives me an idea of where I need to make sure I’m breaking up content, or have a call to action. The best place to have a call to action might not be at the bottom of a blogpost. It might be in the middle somewhere.
And that’s something we’re testing over the next quarter, because I’m noticing that because our show notes are so long sometimes, people don’t necessarily … They’re listening and they’re not making it all the way down to the opt in at the bottom of the episode. So maybe we need to try an opt in up around where the audio player is. We’re going to start doing that. In testing that, though, I can actually see how people are engaging and where they’re clicking and what they’re doing based on the Heatmap. So a tool called Hotjar. It’s a free option. It’s really great.
I actually use a tool called TruConversion, put together by the team over at Digital Marketer. T-R-U Conversion. I love it. I believe it’s about 50 bucks a month. We’ve got heatmaps, we got some goal setting, we’ve got some higher level stuff. It’s really valuable if you’re ready to take that next step. But absolutely not where you have to get started. I just wanted to tell you sort of what I use.
The tool I used before TruConversion was called Lucky Orange. I loved, loved, loved, it for a long time. I highly recommend it. It’s a little bit more comfortable price-wise. And they do have some cool onsite chat options if that’s something you’re also looking for. So check out Lucky Orange as another option.
But definitely make sure you have analytics. And also heatmapping on your site so that you can be seeing not only who’s getting there, but how they’re spending their time there once they get there. I’m constantly amazed by the things that get clicked. I will totally position something to be like, this is going to be the click. Everyone’s going to love it. And then not so much. They click on the small link below it or something. And I’m like, that worked, now we know. All right.
So check those tools out.
And to wrap this up I’ve got a little bit of an announcement.
As I mentioned at the top of the show, this is Episode 396. That means we’re just a few episodes away from Episode 400. I’m stupid excited. Also we’re going to be relaunching the live show Hit the Mic TV that same week. In fact the actual dates are … I was ill-prepared to give you dates. So let me actually grab this from my calendar while I’m sitting here recording this for you. The actual date of Episode 400 is May 8th, 2018. That is the same week we will be launching Hit the Mic TV.
Generally speaking Hit the Mic TV will happen on Thursdays over on Facebook. But we’re going to kick it off with a special episode of Hit the Mic podcast/Hit the Mic TV. We’re going to do a live episode of this podcast in the structure of the new Hit the Mic TV show over on Facebook. So make sure if you have not yet like my Facebook page, you go do that. There’ll be a link on the show notes. So if you haven’t liked the page, building up to that you’ll see me testing some things, and playing with some things, or finalizing sort of the structure of the show. And some of the support pieces that are going to happen over on Facebook around the show. Because we’ll be doing more lives outside of the structured show that will happen on Thursdays.
But you’re going to want to join us live because we’re going to do a giveaway. We’re actually going to give away a couple of things. We’re going to give away some gift cards. We’re going to give away some Backstage memberships. And we’re actually going to give away some one-on-one time with me. So you’re going to want to join us May 8th over on Facebook at 2 p.m. Pacific Time. So that’s, what?, 5 p.m. East Coast time? Yeah, 5 p.m. East Coast time. So at 2 o’clock on the West Coast, 5 o’clock for you folks on the East Coast. Again, that is May 8th. Details are over on the show notes pages, so check them out.
Otherwise, have a great rest of your week. We’ll see you Backstage in the meantime. And thanks for listening to the show.
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