Danielle Wiley: Four Essential Influencer Social Engagement Metrics
Influencer marketing is effective in engaging targeted audiences, but marketers may be missing the value of more subtle metrics.
“Brands and agencies need to start diving deeper into the metrics, because most are missing the big picture of performance and a giant opportunity to gain more insight into your campaign.”
By Danielle Wiley
Influencer marketing is highly effective in engaging highly-targeted audiences. However, brands and agencies often miss the opportunity to gain more insight into campaigns by not diving deeper into the metrics. Danielle Wiley, CEO, Sway Group, recommends paying attention to four areas of engagement that reveal the sentiment and opportunity behind those “likes” or “shares.”
In a rapidly-shifting marketing environment with pandemic-induced restrictions and changing consumer behaviors, the outdated tactic of "spray and pray" advertising just doesn't cut it. Now more than ever, when few businesses have the luxury of blasting their message to the world at large in hopes of reaching the right audience, it's wasteful and expensive.
This is where influencer marketing is usually presented as the modern alternative to unaccountable traditional media advertising. It's true that influencer marketing keeps proving itself to be far more effective when it comes to engaging highly-targeted audiences. However, brands and agencies need to start diving deeper into the metrics, because most are missing the big picture of performance and a giant opportunity to gain more insight into your campaign.
“Engagements—likes, shares, replies, clicks, views, comments, pins, etc—are more useful to analyze than impressions because they show how the content is resonating with its audience.”
The better way to measure any given influencer marketing program's success is all about action. You've likely already moved beyond impressions and reach or tallying up likes and comments. But to really understand how people are interacting with your content, it's time to push up your sleeves and take a good look under the hood of social platform engagement.
Impressions and Reach Are Yesterday's Metrics
Impressions may still have value at the top of the marketing funnel, but they're like buying a billboard: You put your messaging out there to the widest audience and hope that the numbers game works in your favor. At my influencer marketing agency, we know engagement is far more relevant. Engagement is all about the actions people take when they encounter your content. Engagements—likes, shares, replies, clicks, views, comments, pins, etc—are more useful to analyze than impressions because they show how the content is resonating with its audience.
However, many marketers don't know how deep you can get with engagement. Thanks to the advanced first-party API platform data that's now available, it's possible to evaluate performance in fascinating new ways.
Granular Engagement Data Reveals the Real Story
Hitting the like button is a form of engagement, to be sure, but it doesn't offer a whole lot of useful data. In our click-happy culture, liking a post may show genuine interest—or it may be a routine action taken to be polite or just as a matter of habit.
In order to see past all those happy little hearts and thumbs-ups, try turning your attention to these often-overlooked social media metrics:
1. Instagram Saves
Instagram's saves feature isn't new, but it's a metric many marketers overlook when it comes to understanding campaign impact. An Instagram save is not only one of the key factors Instagram uses in its display algorithm. It shows you that a user finds the content valuable and plans to come back to it. For example, suppose you're marketing a spice brand with a holiday recipe-focused campaign. In that case, saves are telling you that it's working—your audience is capturing that content, likely with the intent of trying the recipe for themselves. Now you know that a particular influencer is connecting with their audience in the way you want them to, and you can prioritize working with them for future recipe-based campaigns.
2. Instagram Story Taps Forwards/Taps Backs/Replies
Instagram Stories don't allow for likes, comments, or saves, but they do offer their own set of interesting metrics. You can look at Tap Backs to see how many people went back through the Story content to rewatch it, track the percentage of Tap Forwards to see whether Story content was viewed or skipped, and see whether someone replied to a particular Story clip. Knowing that audiences are consuming Stories is good news, but it's better to understand how to consume this content.
3. Pinterest Zooms
In 2017, Pinterest added pinch-to-zoom functionality, allowing users to zoom in and out on various pins. This has become a pretty standard feature given our modern mobile devices, but many marketers aren't taking advantage of Pinterest's data reporting on these user behaviors. By tracking those pinches to zooms on images or GIFs, brands can see whether audiences are going in for a closer look. If a particular image is getting plenty of zooms, it's a fair bet that audiences are interested in the contents and may be more likely to take action.
4. Comment Content
A high number of comments on a given social post might indicate strong engagement, but what are these people actually talking about? Brands should always take the time to review these conversations (and better yet, join in!) to read the room: is there interest being expressed beyond "Great pic"? Are there questions being asked, opportunities to provide more info, or intent to purchase being expressed? Digging deeper often provides useful qualitative campaign data that can't be gleaned from a simple comment tally.
The Devil's in the Details
When it comes to driving real action, like generating web traffic, online purchases, newsletter signups, app downloads, and more, engagement is the secret sauce that makes influencer marketing most effective. Engagement matters because it helps extend organic reach and, more importantly, shows you whether or not you have an audience that's paying attention.
Without engagement, influencer marketing would be nothing more than a modern form of old-school advertising. The magic is in the action, and that's where your measurement efforts should be focused in order to fully understand how your campaign is working and fine-tune your future efforts.
December 1, 2020
