It’s Measurement Week; Are You Making These Four Data Mistakes?

1. You think size is the most important thing.

Saying your brand is successful because of the number of Facebook likes or Twitter followers you have is a lot like counting the number of friends you have instead of the number of friends you can count on. Measuring data such as conversation, amplification and applause rates will showcase how engaged your audience is and help you identify growth opportunities.

Conversation rate: total number of comments or replies/total number of posts Amplification rate: total number of shares or retweets/total number of posts Applause rate: total number of likes or favorites/total number of posts

2. You don’t know what the Facebook algorithm is, and/or you don’t know how to manipulate it.

Facebook’s algorithm decides who, when and how users see your company’s content. Multiple changes this year have hurt brands by decreasing overall reach, exposure and engagement. To combat this, brands should be testing and maximizing on everything from post times to content type to calls to action.

3. You don’t know your audience…

Understanding your followers is key. What are their unique interests? What other influencers do they follow? What is the gender breakdown? Understanding the answers to these questions allows brands to create content that’s interesting to more of their followers.

4. … or where they are coming from.

It’s no secret that Facebook mobile usage is huge. No matter where you go, you are likely to see people checking Facebook on their phones.

In one recent Facebook ad campaign, we saw that 95 percent of our ad impressions were served to users on mobile devices, with the remaining 5 percent being served to users via desktop. With mobile impression share being so high, it is critical that advertisers not only serve up ads that are mobile friendly, but that also drive users to digital experiences that are optimized for mobile.