“If content is king, then conversion is queen.” — John Munsell, CEO of Bizzuka

Appearing online after the author said it in a conference he paneled about web content management in 2008, this quote has been tweeted, shared, and used in blog posts, hundreds of thousands of times. It even ranked as one of the Top 20 social media quotes of all time.

This is an example of the power of social media. Your content, once shared either within your school community or straight out to the public, can be shared and re-shared online, giving you the reach you need in delivering what you and your school want to say.

In a previous blog, 5 Tips for Creating a Social Media Publishing Calendar for Private Schools, we discussed the different social media platforms you can use to promote your school. We also mentioned how to use each of them, as well as what kind of content you can create and post to attract school enrollment leads.

In this article, we look beyond content and go into its effectivity and how we can measure it.

Keeping The Focus On Your Main Goal

If you understand the importance of your school’s online presence via a website or on social media, then you also know that it’s more than just posting great blogs, beautiful photographs, getting tons of traffic on your website, or being up there in the search rankings. While these are all very important, they should all ultimately focus on the crux of all your efforts: getting your online assets to produce. Specifically, getting those much-needed conversions, or school enrollment leads.

Getting your target audience’s attention is one thing, but being able to get them to respond is better. You may consider yourself a hit among your followers if one of your articles or blog posts receive a hundred likes, but did that response mean you achieved your main goal? Did your readers actually interact with you and your content or take the steps necessary to become a school enrollment lead?

Whatever the reasons behind the content your school publishes and why it was written, everyone involved should be aligned behind the same objectives. How?

Meet With Your Team

Ensure everyone on your marketing and admissions teams speak the same language. Agree on a framework that everybody understands. In one of our blogs, we discussed the importance of having a Social Media Manager to be in the center of all your Social Media Marketing (SMM) efforts. Even if he or she is in charge of programs and activities pertaining to SMM, your Social Media Manager should hold a meeting with you, your marketing team, and other concerned school administrators. Discuss and get their buy-in on what your objectives are, who your target audiences will be, and what social media platforms you will be using.

Your Metrics and KPI’s

Once you’re in agreement on your goals and objectives, be sure to identify your key performance indicators (KPI’s). KPI’s are the measures and ratios that track the efficiency, effectiveness, and the quality of an organization’s operations over a specific time. These are formulated and agreed upon by your team. Your KPI’s should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound).

In fulfilling your KPI’s, there are numerous metrics you can choose from and implement. It helps to narrow your choices down, especially in the areas you need to measure. In this case, social media marketing.

Here are 5 metrics I suggest you start with:

1. Share of Voice (SOV)

You want to see how conversations on social media are mentioning your school's name versus your competitor schools. This metric will help you in identifying positive, neutral, or negative feedback to your social media presence.

To calculate your SOV, you can use the following equation:

SOV = Total Number of Mentions for Your School / Total Number of Mentions of Your Competitors

2. Engagement Rate

3. Referrals

In evaluating your social media marketing campaign, it’s best to track how much traffic your social media accounts provide your website. This is called referral traffic and benefits your school’s website by adding more visitors to it from your social media sources.

This can show you how each of your social media accounts is performing so you can shift your attention to the most effective platforms.

You can use Google Analytics to view the amount of referral traffic your website receives from social networking platforms.

4. Return of Investment (ROI)

Marketing on social media is free, but if you ever decide to fund your campaigns, your ROI should achieve profits. Paid ads on Facebook or other social media platforms can reach a larger number of target audiences and can lead to more potential leads.

This is the ultimate measure of your social media marketing campaign’s effectiveness. Your social media manager and marketing team can measure their efforts in determining what’s working and what’s not and should be able to adjust their strategies for the long run.

You may have different goals for each social media platform and thus, your ROI may vary.

5. Conversions

When we say conversions, this is when your enrollment leads perform desired actions as a result of your Call To Actions strategies:

• Subscribing to your school's newsletter
• Downloading one of your e-books
• Signing up for a school tour
• Completing lead generation forms

Keep in mind that these conversions are driven by your successful efforts at social media marketing. This means that you have a good relationship with your social media community.

Conclusion

Although we’ve emphasized conversions as the final goal of your school’s social media marketing, there are still a host of other metrics to consider. These all work together to ensure that you succeed in not just one goal, but also in other aspects that contribute to that conversion.

One notable metric is Engagement Rate, which measures the quality of your content and its impact on your audience. Without good, endearing content, it would prove difficult to create a bond with and within your community. In slowly cultivating what your audience wants, you will eventually reap the rewards of the metrics that really count.

If you want to take the next step in making sure your campaigns are successful and worth your efforts, it’s best to learn and understand how you can measure them.

In another blog, we’ll go into detail on how to read these metrics using online tools.