Measuring the Impact of Social Media Part 2: Pinterest & Instagram
In the first article in this series, we shared insights from Grete Lavrenz, Senior Partner at Spong on measuring the impact of Facebook and Twitter. Today, we continue the discussion with Lavrenz, focusing on Pinterest and Instagram.
Instagram has yet to provide a great way to track insights, but from what we can track, we can determine the success of a post. Grete recommends “looking at the number of followers the channel has, which count as “potential” impressions or reach.” She warns, though, that they cannot be guaranteed since not every Instagram user that follows a channel will see the post. Grete continues her advice, “Then monitor how many likes and comments an image receives. Compare the amount of engagements with the amount of followers (impressions) your channel has to determine a relative engagement rate, which won’t be exact.” An example Lavrenz provides is if a channel has 912 followers and a post receives 63 engagements, the relative engagement rate is around 6%. Posts can be compared to one another to see if a post about a specific topic or photo receives more engagement than others. According to Grete, “Time of day is another important consideration with a chronological feed – if a post in the morning receives more engagement than a post in the afternoon, try keeping most posts to the morning for maximum reach and engagement.”
While measurement via Instagram is not yet available, there are tools like Iconosquare you can use to evaluate the channel over a period of time.
Pinterest provides strong insights to track both the channel and single post success. With a goal in mind, audience insights, daily activity and clicks to web are important metrics to track. For each pin, Grete recommends you “evaluate the success based on number of impressions compared with number of engagements (repins, clicks, likes) as you would with the other channels.” Pinterest Analytics, found at analytics.pinterest.com, can be used if the page is set up as a brand or for a company channel.
In Summary
When trying to quantify the business impact of impressions in any social media venue, Grete indicates “there should be goals set for each platform.” If the goal to increase brand recognition, for example, an increase in impressions can help to show an expanded reach of your brand message. Or, if your goal is to create customer loyalty, this is more difficult to determine with social media alone. If you tend to focus on specific locations, monitoring sales growth and repeat purchasing of consumers in this area can be traced back to social. Another way to quantify is to give value to each impression. Lavrenz recommends this article from Adweek for determining what value to give to an impression.
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