Keeping up with new social media and analytics buzzwords, learning what they all mean, and understanding their importance can easily become overwhelming. To make your life easier, we’ve identified and defined 41 of the most important ones and explained why they matter.

By the way, with Simply Measured reports you can track and analyze all of these plus more, as there are 750 different metrics available.

Audience Metrics:

The people who chose to join the social media community for a particular brand. Each social channel has it’s own terminology: Facebook – Fans or Likes; Twitter – Followers; Google+ – Circlers; YouTube – Subscribers; and Pinterest – Followers.

1. Audience Growth: The rate at which a brand adds (or loses) audience members.

2. Engagement as % of Audience: Adding up total engagement actions across all social networks and then dividing that by total audience.

3. Engagement per Fan/Follower: Adding up total engagement actions for one network and dividing by the number of fans (or followers) for that particular network.

Social Listening & Monitoring:

Social listening (aka monitoring) is the practice of identifying engagement opportunities and monitoring brand perceptions across all social channels, not just the ones a brand owns. Active listening and monitoring helps brands better understand what is going in the marketplace. Related metrics include:

4. Sentiment Analysis: Detecting and understanding how the audience is reacting to a brand, either positively or negatively.

5. Presence: The complete collection of a brand’s presence across all the social networks.

6. Reach: The total combined amount of a brand’s audience, compounded by the friends of the audience and anyone in the greater community who is talking about or engaging with the brand.

7. Resonance: How a particular message triggers a reaction across the entire social graph, all the while creating valuable touchpoints that drive back to the original content location.

Engagement Metrics:

Also known as the currency of social media. By more deeply understanding the different types of engagement, a brand can better understand how effective their interactions are at impacting downstream activities. Related metrics include:

8. Facebook Engagement: Combination of all the activity on a brand’s Fan Page: shares, PTAT, comments, clicks and likes. For more Facebook definitions, visit our 60+ Insights Definitions post.

9. Twitter Engagement: Combination of all the activity on a brand’s Twitter account: ReTweets, mentions, replies and clicks. Curious to learn more about your Twitter presence? Try our Free Twitter Follower Report!

10. Google+ Engagement: Combination of all the activity on a brand’s G+ page: Reshares, comments, and +1s.

11. YouTube Engagement: Combination of all the activity on a brand’s YouTube channel: comments, ratings, and shares.

12. Pinterest Engagement: Combination of all the activity on a brand’s Pinterest page: repins, comments, and likes.

13. Click Through Rate: The number of clicks on a post ... Lire la suite de l'article