How to Decipher Social Media Metrics Codes and Patterns

By Leslie Poston from Social Media Metrics For Dummies

As you track your social media metrics over time and begin to use some of the next layer tools, such as segmentation and dayparting, to analyze your online and social interaction, it's important to keep your eye peeled for patterns of use, interest, and engagement and the secret codes your visitors and fans/followers are sending you through their activity.

One helpful and interesting metric you can track is the shifting attention patterns on your blog. By sorting your metrics data by type of post, visitor segment, time on post, and bounce rate and doing a comparison over time, you will see a pattern of attention emerge. You can then fine-tune your content according to the data you gather about your most popular posts in your metrics history.

Don't write the same post over and over in different ways to try to keep those visitors coming back, though keyword popularity should be factored in as well. Take the posts that held people's attention the longest and look at what made them special: Were they a list? Did they have more images than usual? Was it an interview? Did it inspire comments? Did you install a new plug-in that day?

Take the data you gather, apply it, and then tag and track that new piece of content you created (video, post, photo, or audio file). After you've had a chance to gather attention data on the new content, compare it to the popular content you used as your model. Keep adjusting over time to increase the engagement level of your visitors and turn them into true fans that want to take your content out into social media to their networks (micro conversion).