Let's measure the social media metrics! Actually, let's not.

I get asked a lot to report on social media metrics and to be honest, the time it takes to pull together these metrics can take away time from actually producing content that genuinely impacts the business. It made me think about how much the metrics really don't matter as much as you think and isn't the true measure of whether your content is working for your audience or not.

With LinkedIn, especially, the audience is a very mature and professional audience and it is very likely they will be engaging with your content and certainly would not share the article publicly, and may not even openly interact with it publicly. Many fear being outed for having an opinion, may be in fear of appearing to have favouritism and worst of all to be sold to! It is very likely that your core audience is aware of you, and the content you produce is working to be top of mind; but you wouldn't know by counting the metrics.

The true test of your social media working or not is when you get the call or the email to talk about sales. If people say to you things like 'I've been watching your content and really love what you stand for' or 'I loved that post you did on .....'. This is the true test, not whether some random strangers unrelated to your ideal customer is clicking on your posts. Many digital marketers actually cheat the system and find you plenty of likes and shares but they are not your actual market. They're so focused on the metrics they're not thinking about your sales.

What does work is to see the spikes of interest in certain topics however, and to see what parts of the service offering is getting more attention than others. This does help you produce more content that people want and it does also help you define the overall product offering too.

Don't stop producing content just because you don't get the clicks. The regular content being produced is important, and the themes you stand for are the most important of all. Let people know what you stand for so that when they visit your profile they are using this information to convert into a sales contact. We often think of websites as a conversion tool, but your social profiles are the same too - especially LinkedIn, in my experience.

Sometimes the things you stand for that get a polarised viewpoint can actually be where the gold is for sales too. The interactions may have a mix of positive and negative views and commentary, but these may be the most effective at having someone tip over the line to call you or to have that coffee that leads to a business opportunity. So, don't be afraid to have a strong voice regardless of the negative reaction you may get.

Of course there is a time and a place to measure analytics, and for digital ecommerce based products that may be a big part of the success of the selling process if it is directly aligned with a sales funnel, but there are many brands and consultancy level businesses that want to spend a fortune and a lot of time measuring things that just don't matter. The temptation is there for this over-focus on metrics to force your marketing and digital agencies to cheat the system and go for the numbers at the expense of selling your products. Don't force them into this mindset. Measure the sales leads and the revenue instead - no mistaking or faking those.