3 KPI’s to Measure the Success of an Event on Social Media

The success of an event is based on a measurement strategy that states the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to be considered. There are multiple types of KPIs such as (Sales KPIs, Marketing KPIs, Social Media KPIs…). Organizations identify and track different KPIs depending on its objectives and what it wishes to achieve from an event.

The following list includes 3 social media KPIs to measure the success of an event during its different stages.

Social Media KPIs

To ensure the proper reach of the media campaign aligned with an upcoming event, an organization should use the metrics below to achieve maximum exposure, develop customer engagement, enforce brand image, reach target audience and achieve desired action such as registrations, attendance and lead generation.
1- Exposure & Distribution, 2- Engagement & Interaction, 3- Influence & Action

Exposure and Distribution:

Before launching an event, an organization should make sure it’s available on all social networking sites to connect with its target audience and that all channels are updated regularly with the upcoming event details;

Contact information (email & phone number)
Info (place, time & date)
Details (event promo: images & videos)
Prices (ticket details & point of purchase)
Speakers (bio & links to profile)
Social sharing (social media & email)

The ease of access to event details on social media should reflect a growth in exposure on all channels and its distribution among communities and groups; number of fans on Facebook, followers on twitter, connections on LinkedIn, subscribers on YouTube and whether the event is being circulated on social media, mentioned on other platforms and from what sources.

 

Engagement and Interaction:

Next step requires developing reach and increasing engagement on social media to attain maximum publicity, in order to achieve that a custom landing page should be prepared for those who are interested in the event and are looking for more detailed info. The landing page should be clear, include an attractive image and more text content including all the above and the following info:

Schedule (Breaks, Workshops, Panels)
Partners (Media & Sponsors)
Unique Hashtag (To build engagement during the event)
Outcome (Certificate…)

An event is the best opportunity to achieve maximum exposure on social media, thus during an event the organization should provide an incentive for its target audience to interact. This can be done through:

Connecting with users on social networks and sharing their feedback, comments and conversations by retweeting their content and images.

Another way is to gamify tweeting during event by organizing a simple contest or by displaying the tweet stream on screens in the event.

Engaging with influencers is another incentive, influencers are people your target audience trust and have great presence online and make it easier to spread the message.

Building a photo wall is also an interesting method to encourage attendees to take pictures and share on social media.

 

Influence & Action:

This is an important indicator to evaluate the success of an event and how well the social media campaign and marketing efforts resonate with the audience. Although there is no universal method to measure an event impact on social media and no approach can be applied to all yet evaluating the different actions taken such as the number of retweets, mentions, comments, shares, reviews, video views, live stream/site visits, registrations, and number of leads/sales will help you understand the perception and attitude of customers.

You can use the following FREE tools to measure the above:

TweetReach.com: Add the hashtag used during the event and you will be able to see the estimated reach, exposure, contributors, tweets timeline and activity.

Twittercounter.com: Gives you twitter statistics (graph & numbers) over a custom period of time, number of tweets, followers and following.

Unionmetrics.com: Gives you instagram insights, top fans, best time to post, post engagement.

Mention.com: Create an alert for your organization name or the hashtag used during the event. Mention.com will scan different sources, social media or web and send you email alerts.

In addition to the above, there are several effective tools to measure event return on investment which should be relevant to the goals set prior to the launch of any event. Setting clear measurements will help generate more value and RIO.