If you are on social media (LinkedIn, BeBee, Twitter and Facebook) you have probably seen discussions about how many shares, views, and likes a post has received.
Almost everyone chases these numbers as if they have value. They don’t.
The Problem: Using What’s Obvious
Social media platforms provide only a limited number of metrics to those posting material. Depending on the platform, it’s relatively easy to see how many “views” an article has recieved, or how many shares its received.
While these metrics “may” have some enabling relationship to goals that have value, in and of themselves, they have no value.
You can’t buy a loaf of bread with your LinkedIn views. In fact, you don’t even know how views are defined by different platforms.
But that’s all you have, or at least, that’s all that you can see. Views “may” lead to achieving a goal, business or otherwise, but only to the extent that they result in a reader taking an action you want them to take (visiting a website, buying a product, calling you).
It’s the same for “likes”. It may be gratifiying to know that x number of people “liked” what you posted, hence the term vanity metrics, but they have no value.
You can’t buy bread with likes, either.
Sadly, people gauge their social media success by these metrics, because they don’t see any other way, and assume that higher views are better, more likes are better, etc., but that an assumption for which we have no data.
The result is we have huge numbers of people evaluating themselves, and their writing based on metrics that mean nothing and have no value in and of themselves.
Are There Metrics One Can Access That Do Count?
Yes. There is one metric you can use that doesn’t depend on having a social media follower go to your website, or other external platform.
If you have a website, in fact there are are many metrics you can use, because YOU control what gets recorded – time on page, how many pages they view, what people click on, and so on, including conversion rates (sales).
Back to social media, the one metric you CAN use is whether a viewer of your article or update clicks through a link that you place in the post.
How To Determine Click Throughs From Social Media Posts Without Having A Website.
It’s a simple trick. Use a link shortening service like bit.ly that provides analytics that tell you how many people saw the link, and how many people clicked through the link, regardless of where the link goes.
More detailed statistics are available if you use the enterprise version of bit.ly, but below is just a portion of click through numbers for some of my articles:
Use a link shortening service like bit.ly to track click throughs from social media posts. Bit.ly provides analytics that show the number of people who saw the link and how many clicked through, regardless of the link’s destination. Consider upgrading to the enterprise version of bit.ly for more detailed statistics. Here are some click through numbers for a selection of my articles:
The landing pages for the links are irrelevant to the statistics on the right side, and that’s important because you may not own your own landing pages. Bit.ly simple records the number of clicks for your links.
The Value of Click Throughs
One can also question whether click throughs are of value, of course, but clicking through means that your reader took an action that hopefully results in the achievement of some business goal, besides simply reading what you wrote.
If, for example, you are promoting a book that is for sale on amazon, then you NEED people to click through, hopefully to purchase the book. So click throughs, while not a business result, are closer to the business result you want than views.
Other Methods
Most other methods rely on being in control of the landing pages. Amazon is actually an exception, because if you publish through Createspace, OR become part of their Associates program, you will have, at your disposal, some statistics that include number of click throughs, and number of purchases. While it’s tedious, one can actually track which particular links resulted in click throughs and sales.
Finally, there are other methods using third party service providers of social media tools, or other link shortening services.
