Advanced Metrics for Social Media Marketing

Social media is commonly measured in numbers that aren’t very helpful to hotel marketers.

Blog RSS subscribers.  YouTube videos views.  Twitter followers.

The problem with these metrics is that it’s hard to measure success. Does our blog need 1,500 subscribers to be relevant, or is 50 good enough?  Does 10,000 views mean my video was a success?

More importantly, what actionable insight can you get from numbers like those?  Here are a couple of metrics that I’ve found useful recently:

Mention frequency – How many times per month (on average) are we reviewed on social travel sites?  The more mentions, the better.  It helps boost popularity ranking (below).

Popularity ranking – Especially useful for tracking progress in sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp.  Showing up in the top 10-20 results – on the first page – is very important.

Satisfaction percentage – This statistic is a little harder to generate, but the results are more insightful.  What is the overall consensus on your facility?  What areas need the most improvement?

Cost per engaged guest – Your social media campaign budget divided by the number of people you established dialogues with.  This figure measures your communication effectiveness.