Marketing: “Vanity” Metrics You Should Ignore
Business Technology | June 19, 2014
Top 3 Metrics You Can Safely Forget About
“Vanity metrics” is a term you may or may not have heard about. It refers to the criteria by which we measure our traffic and online viability. What we are beginning to learn is that many of these used to measure “results” can quite often be misleading and need to be politely ignored.
Those you can safely ignore:
- Likes, Followers and Connections – The one with the most followers wins, right? If only it were that simple. In reality, more followers translate to a better bottom line only when you are actively engaging with them, and building a relationship that leads to conversions. Merely having a huge number of likes or followers who don’t make the transition to customers is relatively pointless.
- Comments – Again, with the objective being to increase conversion, merely generating a blog post that titillates and fosters a large number of comments, but generates no leads, is a waste of a blog post. Make the reason they comment have something to do with leading them further along the path toward conversion, such as a topical question.
- Impressions – Mainly used in your advertising, the number of ad impressions is relatively useless, as it does not indicate any measurable action. Simply having your ad display in front of a couple of million computer screens is no real measure of how it performs. Rather, take a look at click-thru rates and conversion rates.
A terrific piece on this is available at HubSpot.
Those you ought to keep an eye on:
- Shares of your content – Even though this is not a concrete statistic, getting your content shared in whatever form is a step in the right direction. This indicates that your content making an impression (the right kind!) and is being passed around.
- Social mentions and citations – Seeing that Google is now integrating social signals and citations into the search algorithm, this is an element that is very helpful. This aids your website in search, as well as authority.
- Conversions – The holy grail, as they say. If all your social media and content isn’t ultimately leading to conversions, you should take a look at it.
Read more about this at Mashable.
Top 3 Metrics You Can Safely Forget About
“Vanity metrics” is a term you may or may not have heard about. It refers to the criteria by which we measure our traffic and online viability. What we are beginning to learn is that many of these used to measure “results” can quite often be misleading and need to be politely ignored.
Those you can safely ignore:
- Likes, Followers and Connections – The one with the most followers wins, right? If only it were that simple. In reality, more followers translate to a better bottom line only when you are actively engaging with them, and building a relationship that leads to conversions. Merely having a huge number of likes or followers who don’t make the transition to customers is relatively pointless.
- Comments – Again, with the objective being to increase conversion, merely generating a blog post that titillates and fosters a large number of comments, but generates no leads, is a waste of a blog post. Make the reason they comment have something to do with leading them further along the path toward conversion, such as a topical question.
- Impressions – Mainly used in your advertising, the number of ad impressions is relatively useless, as it does not indicate any measurable action. Simply having your ad display in front of a couple of million computer screens is no real measure of how it performs. Rather, take a look at click-thru rates and conversion rates.
A terrific piece on this is available at HubSpot.
Those you ought to keep an eye on:
- Shares of your content – Even though this is not a concrete statistic, getting your content shared in whatever form is a step in the right direction. This indicates that your content making an impression (the right kind!) and is being passed around.
- Social mentions and citations – Seeing that Google is now integrating social signals and citations into the search algorithm, this is an element that is very helpful. This aids your website in search, as well as authority.
- Conversions – The holy grail, as they say. If all your social media and content isn’t ultimately leading to conversions, you should take a look at it.
Read more about this at Mashable.