Measuring social media success, and the true value of a ‘like’, is a contentious issue. Rupert Staines, Managing Director UK and Europe, RadiumOne UK highlights the greater importance of shares on social media platforms over likes.
Never before in the world of online media has the phrase “sharing is caring” been more relevant, and marketers are beginning to realise it. Far too often, the success or failure of a campaign is measured on the number of likes and follows it generates.
Using these so called vanity metrics as a standard needs to stop as they only tell a small part of the story. Content shared is much more valuable. Likes and follows are a passive, almost thoughtless, gesture whereas a share implies a certain level of endorsement – far more valuable for businesses.
In their own right, vanity metrics aren’t a bad thing. The problem is that they are frequently used when a share would be far more indicative of return on investment.
A like or a follow is effectively an opt-in for future messages and each one increases the reach of future messages by one, provided they continue to like or follow the brand. It tells us little more than that a consumer enjoyed a post and pressed a button, requiring only slightly more commitment than doing nothing at all.
On the other hand, a share exponentially increases the reach of content to all of that user’s connections.
Shares are more valuable for a number of reasons:
• Firstly, shares mean content is distributed far more widely and these additional impressions can be highly valuable.
• Secondly, if a user is going to make the additional effort of sharing content, it implies endorsement – these potential customers are telling their social connections that they believe your content is worth the attention. It’s the power of word of mouth, except now it can be tracked and measured online and you can start to see what part it really plays in the customer journey.
• Thirdly, there are technical benefits to shares over other metrics – although changeable, Facebook’s News Feed algorithm gives around 1,300 per cent more weight to shares than likes when it comes to activities shown near to the top of a user’s feed, meaning that the content is massively more visible on the network when shared. This weighting can be crucial in ensuring that your content cuts through the chatter and noise.
This makes it vital that web pages and ad creative provide users with easy ways to share directly to Facebook and other social networks in as few clicks as possible.
To put it bluntly, shares are worth more in terms of ROI than a like or a follow. Eventbrite has carried out analysis of its internal data on the value of a social share for its customers, finding that each share generates an average of $3.23 in ticket revenue across all networks.
Compelling stuff, but it doesn’t end there. By tracking shares across networks and the internet as a whole, it becomes possible to create a picture of a user’s interests and purchasing habits over time. This in turn enables advertisers to better target relevant audience segments with pinpoint accuracy – ensuring that the adverts served are both timely and relevant. After all, it’s no good serving ads for a pair of trainers that have already been purchased – or a leather jacket looked at just once on a whim.
Beyond better targeting at an individual level, we can extrapolate the interests of a user’s social connections through their sharing habits and serve adverts that are likely to be of interest to those users as well. This combines the exponential reach of a share with the power of relevancy in real-time. The impact this can have from an advertising perspective is truly exciting and the impact it can have on conversions is astonishing.
It’s high time that we, as an industry, turn our backs on vanity metrics and look at metrics which really add value and contribute to sophisticated campaigns.
By Rupert Staines
Managing Director UK and Europe
RadiumOne UK
http://www.radiumone.com/
