10 Key Awareness Metrics to Track
Monday, March 15, 2010 | 23 Comments
Tags: awareness metrics, social media measurement, social media metrics
Posted in: Measurement and Metrics, Social Media
Last week we drilled down into engagement metrics, so this week let’s take a look at awareness and reach. The reach of your brand is, essentially, a measure of the impression your brand is making online: how far it’s moved across the Web and how many eyes, ears, and mouths are seeing, hearing, and talking about it.
Now, how do you measure reach? It might seem a little fuzzy at first, but these few metrics can provide a foothold in the practice of measuring how far your brand extends — and *how* it extends — out there on the Web.
1. Potential Reach
The most basic of all awareness metrics, looking at the numbers of fans, followers, or “eyeballs” is a pretty fundamental concept. But the more accurate way to look at numbers like this is as *potential* reach, as you’ll never have all of those people paying attention to you simultaneously. Take a look at other elements like peak usage time for specific sites and marry awareness metrics with actual engagement activity to get a closer ratio of potential vs. actual reach at any one time.
2. Mentions Per Time Period
The online equivalent of “impressions”, looking simply at how many times your brand is talked about online during a given time period can give you a sense of overall awareness and chatter. It can be interesting to segment this category of data overall, too, through lenses like “mentions by media type”, to see whether blogs or forums or mainstream media are carrying the bulk of conversation about your brand. And line up this metric with your targeted campaigns or engagement efforts, and get a sense of whether your work drives those numbers up, down, or not at all.
3. Inbound Links
The web analytics standby, inbound links are a solid indicator of the people that are not only aware of you, but are telling other people that they should be aware of you, too. Want to know where in social media you should be spending your time? Look at the sites and media types where the inbound links live to get a sense of the types of media that are driving consistent attention for your brand. And to get some insight into how people refer to you and think of you, pay attention to the anchor text folks use when they create those links, and see if they’re using the terminology to describe your work that you hope they are.
4. Share of Conversation
Share of Voice is a familiar concept, looking at how much you’re mentioned or covered in comparison to, say, the competition. but Share of Conversation measures something a bit more helpful: how often you or your company are mentioned in context of the conversations that are most relevant to you. In other words, if you want to be a leading document management company, how often are folks talking about you when they’re talking about their document management needs? For a bit more detail about how to calculate and measure Share of Conversation, read Marcel Lebrun’s post.
5. Subscribers to Content
Related to potential reach, number of subscriptions can function as both an awareness and an engagement metric. Whether you’re talking email subscribers, blog subscribers, or even subscribers to your print publication, subscriptions represent conscious interest in your content and a focused group of potential reach for that media. And while you often depend on provided “reach” or impression numbers given to you by third parties for advertising placements or the like, subscribers is a number that’s directly attributable to your own content and impact.
6. Referral and Recommendation Ratio
This metric really ends up in the camp of engagement, too, as well as sales. But from an awareness point of view, it can be valuable when looking at the value of increased awareness over time, and whether that correlates with a consistent proportion of recommendations or referrals in and among the other mentions. If you can successfully increase the ratio of direct brand recommendations as an overall share of reach and awareness, you’ll better make a case for designing efforts to reach larger audiences.
7. Brand Recognition
Sometimes asking people if they know about you still works. That can be an informal straw poll on larger social networks, or a more structured survey of a broader audience through something like a market research firm. Sometimes called recall, the idea here is looking at everything from whether people can and do name your brand inside of a relevant market category, or in association with other relevant ideas or concepts. It can be an interesting broad-brush look at whether you’re present in people’s minds in the ways that matter to you.
8. Brand-Specific Searches
Take a look at your analytics traffic for your website, and see what people are typing into search when they’re referred to you. Are they searching for general industry terms, like “car repair shop in Austin”, or are they specifically searching for “Bob’s Repair Shop Austin”? Look at the ratio to brand searches vs. keyword searches and see how that ratio changes over time. Keyword searches represent a broader need, while brand-specific searches are an indicator that you’re being sought out specifically.
9. Sentiment Trends
There’s a lot of talk about sentiment and what it can or can’t tell you. What we at Radian6 chat a lot about is the value of sentiment as a trend metric, looking at the volume and ratio increase, decrease, or stagnation over a broader time period. While impressions can tell you volume of mentions, coupling them with sentiment trends can tell you whether the brand impression overall is favorable or not. Want to get really granular? Start dissecting, say, the positive sentiment segment and look at the makeup. Are they mostly compliments? Recommendations? Nice words about your staff?
10. Content Resonance
Also firmly with a foot in the engagement camp, watching how content gets shared across the web will also certainly point you toward how many people are seeing what you’re up to. Along with first level shares and spread of your content – the tweets, subscription impressions, website hits – you can also dig into the notion of secondary reach. That means looking at who in your network reshared and passed along your content: retweets, reblogs, shares, or inbound links from spinoff content. Add a time series layer to that – how long the shares and reshares continue to trickle out to the web – and you’ll start seeing the kinds of content that reverberate well.
As we talked about in the post about 10 Key Engagement Metrics to Track, single metrics on their own aren’t really worth much. The real trick is to connect the dots and tie them together so that you can see how several measurements, in tandem, point to progress toward your business goals.
So what are you tracking that indicates reach and awareness in your world? How are you using those measurements to correlate with your sales and engagement data? Would love to hear from you in the comments.
23 Responses to “10 Key Awareness Metrics to Track”
Alex on March 15th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Hi Amber,
what tools allow you to track the Awareness Metrics?
Thanks,
Alex
Zack Gideon on March 15th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Nice article. I would like to hear more about how you quantify brand awareness. What kinds of metrics do you use for that?
Zack Gideon on March 15th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Nice article. I would like to hear more about how you quantify brand awareness. What kinds of metrics do you use for that?
Des Walsh on March 18th, 2010 at 3:08 am
Thanks for this great list and the explanatory notes. I found it all helpful. While I note your wise comment about the need to "connect the dots and tie them together" the two items that stood out for me were Inbound Links and Share of Conversation. I love the explanation of inbound links and their significance (the most succinct, helpful explanation I have read anywhere) and for share of conversation the distinction about "conversations that are most relevant to you" was very helpful.
Des Walsh on March 18th, 2010 at 3:08 am
Thanks for this great list and the explanatory notes. I found it all helpful. While I note your wise comment about the need to "connect the dots and tie them together" the two items that stood out for me were Inbound Links and Share of Conversation. I love the explanation of inbound links and their significance (the most succinct, helpful explanation I have read anywhere) and for share of conversation the distinction about "conversations that are most relevant to you" was very helpful.
Lewis Loud on March 19th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
I decided to read this article out of curiosity, and I have no previous knowledge of the topic. That being said, do companies really think people are talking about their brand in a large degree? I’ve spent a considerable time chatting online and rarely do the conversations include things like brands. In a face to face conversation the same thing is true. I’m wondering if people in the advertising business just think people are always talking about brands. Listening for conversations about your brand might work for Super Brands, but the rest if them, I just can’t see this being useful. Whenever I read anything about the analysis of advertising, most of the time it seems like their just trying to make it more complicated to sell companies more services and to cloud the water so clients feel they need
the help. IMO.
Lewis Loud on March 19th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
I decided to read this article out of curiosity, and I have no previous knowledge of the topic. That being said, do companies really think people are talking about their brand in a large degree? I’ve spent a considerable time chatting online and rarely do the conversations include things like brands. In a face to face conversation the same thing is true. I’m wondering if people in the advertising business just think people are always talking about brands. Listening for conversations about your brand might work for Super Brands, but the rest if them, I just can’t see this being useful. Whenever I read anything about the analysis of advertising, most of the time it seems like their just trying to make it more complicated to sell companies more services and to cloud the water so clients feel they need
the help. IMO.
Jets on May 15th, 2010 at 3:27 am
So do you make the company aware of what people are talking about their brands? How do help them be proactive apart from listening?
Jets on May 15th, 2010 at 3:27 am
So do you make the company aware of what people are talking about their brands? How do help them be proactive apart from listening?
help save marriage guy on June 29th, 2010 at 3:11 am
I’m happy that you’re speaking about it so everyone else is able to know! Will use for sure. To tell you the truth, the trick for me, you have to reignite the place that first brought you together and also avoid a ton of mistakes we all naturally make if you want to save the marriage
Alex on March 15th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Hi Amber,
what tools allow you to track the Awareness Metrics?
Thanks,
Alex