Social Media Goal: Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness is always at or near the top of our client’s list when we discuss social media marketing goals. Even for large brands, Brand Awareness continues to appear as one of the top 3 goals…typically in the form of “enhanced” Brand Awareness or “top of mind” Awareness. And the question usually comes down to… what should we measure (and how) to determine awareness and our success in achieving such?
What is Brand Awareness?
Before we discuss what we measure and how, I want to be specific about the term. Brand Awareness, in the social media world, is the measure of how recognizable your brand (and brand attributes) is to your target audience(s). The good news– brand awareness and engagement in brand is what social media does best.
Why is Brand Awareness Important?
Brand Awareness increases the likelihood of purchase by creating a positive impact. Brand awareness indicates the impact of social media on branding and lays the foundation for a relationship, which lays the foundation of interest, trust and eventually purchase. Brand awareness is a direct result of social reach, engagement, influence and social presence.
Where do you Start?
Start by setting benchmarks of where your brand or business currently is. The following tools provide interesting overviews of your brands presence and influence, because the larger your presence, the more likely you are to have engagement, awareness & influence. Then take metrics monthly using the same tools to measure progress. Here are three free tools you can use:
1. Klout:
What it does: Provides a Klout score which is the measurement of your overall online influence. More technically, it is defined by Klout as the ability to drive measurable actions across the social web.
Formerly only a measurement tool for Twitter, Klout now encompasses Facebook too. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.
How it does it: Klout measures multiple indicators which include: Followers, Mutual Follows, Friends, Total Retweets, Unique Commenters, Unique Likers, Follower/Follow Ratio, Followed Back %, @ Mention Count, List Count, List Followers Count. Unique Retweeters, Unique Messages Retweeted, Likes Per Post, Comments Per Post Follower Retweet %, Unique @ Senders, Follower Mention %, Inbound Messages Per Outbound Message, Update Count. List inclusions, Follower/Follow Ratio, Followed Back %, Unique Senders, Unique Retweeters, Unique Commenters, Unique Likers, Influence of Followers, Influence of Retweeters and Mentioners, Influence of Friends, Influence of Likers and Commenters. …Gasp!
2. tweetreach
What it does: tweetreach is a simple way to measure how far something traveled on Twitter. tweetreach can help you understand how many people are seeing tweets about your brand and exactly who’s talking about it.
How it does it: You search for a url, Twitter name, phrase or hashtag, then generate a report with detailed metrics on that search term. tweetreach provides metrics on the number of different people who saw tweets about something, as well as how many total impressions were generated (because some people may have seen more than one tweet). They also provide more information about the tweets themselves, and the people who tweeted about the topic of interest. This way you can learn who your biggest – and most influential – advocates are.
tweetreach offers free tracking for the first 50 Tweets. They have a variety of pricing plans ranging from $84.00/month to $899.00/month.
3. HowSociable?
What it does: HowSociable provides a simple way for you to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social web. This provides you with a snapshot of where your brand is strongest and where there are opportunities for improvements.
How it does it: HowSociable provides a comprehensive dashboard displaying a “visibility score” based on all results. In essence, a set of benchmark results against one globally recognised traditional brand which has a score of 1000. To ensure that even small, local brands would register, HowSociable uses a sliding scale. The Pro plan includes the following useful features:
- Share results easily with colleagues and clients via PDF reports
- Keep an eye on your competitors with brand comparisons
- See what’s happening right now with real time visibility scores
- Analyse data your own way with Microsoft Excel / CSV export
- Watch how your visibility changes over time with historical data
Perk: Sign up for monthly email updates for your search (available with the free version)
Click this link to view the ScreenCast:
These are just a few tools out there that we incorporate to measure social media presence. Paid for tools, such as Radian6, provide a multitude of metrics to measure brand awareness, campaign life and much more. What tools do you like for measuring brand awareness, social reach, social impact and influence?
