What are the most effective ways to measure the success of your social media strategy in journalism?

1 Define your objectives

Before you can measure anything, you need to define what you want to achieve with your social media strategy. What are your specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals? For example, do you want to increase your followers, reach, engagement, traffic, conversions, or reputation? How will you align your social media objectives with your journalistic values and ethics? How will you track and report your progress and outcomes?

2 Choose your metrics

Once you have your objectives, you need to choose metrics that will help you measure them. Metrics are quantitative indicators that show how well you are performing on social media, such as reach (how many people see your content), engagement (how many people interact with your content), traffic (how many people visit your website or other platforms from your social media posts), conversions (how many people take a desired action), and reputation (how people perceive your brand). Various tools and platforms can be used to collect and analyze these metrics, like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, Instagram Insights, or Hootsuite.

3 Benchmark your performance

Comparing your metrics with standards or references is essential for understanding your performance. You can compare yourself with your own past performance, competitors, or the industry average or best practices. Through benchmarking, you can identify your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and any gaps or areas that need improvement.

4 Evaluate your results

Once you've collected and compared your metrics, it's time to evaluate your results and draw some conclusions. Ask yourself: did you achieve your objectives? What worked well and what didn't? What were the challenges and successes? What insights and learnings have been gained? What feedback and recommendations should be made? Evaluating your results can help you understand the impact and value of your social media strategy, enabling you to communicate it effectively to stakeholders such as your audience, editors, sponsors, or partners.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?