1. Visualize your situation clearly
Tracking your metrics in isolation will only help you so much. While this approach allows you to see how your social presence is evolving and identify peaks and troughs, without a holistic view of your industry, it's difficult to know where you stand.
For example, your growth may seem slow, but it turns out to be faster than your competitors. Or your engagement rate may seem good, but a simple competitive analysis calls it into question .
This context is especially important when communicating results to colleagues macedonia phone number data outside of your direct team. Meeting or exceeding industry benchmarks demonstrates the true value of your work. If you're struggling to meet these targets and know why, you can use this information to support a request for additional resources.
These benchmarks are also very useful when a client or other stakeholder asks you to “make a viral video.”
2. Set realistic goals
In this blog, we often talk about the importance of SMART goals . Benchmarking is essential to properly understand the A and R in SMART: Achievable and Relevant .
Knowing how other players in your industry are currently performing makes it much easier to set business goals that push you to excel and achieve great things.
3. Replicate the winning strategies of leaders in your industry
As we just mentioned, you can gain a lot of insight by comparing your own results to industry benchmarks. But you can go even further by identifying leaders in your industry who are outperforming these benchmarks.
To spot them, simply set up social listening streams using keywords specific to your industry. As you begin to identify important voices in your field, take a look at their accounts to get a sense of their social media strategy .
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Their posting frequency is easy to identify with a simple count. You can also get an idea of their engagement rate by comparing likes (if visible) and comments received with their total number of followers.
When you spot an organization with particularly high engagement rates on social media, try to understand what works for them and consider how you might incorporate these learnings into your own strategy.
4. Identify opportunities quickly
You may have noticed that the audience growth rate benchmark was slightly negative for some industries, particularly on Instagram. If you're looking to grow your audience quickly and you work in one of these industries, this might be a sign that you should focus your efforts on other platforms.
As always, benchmarking is just a starting point for your own testing . You might find, for example, that people who unfollowed the Instagram accounts of retail leaders are looking for innovative new businesses. Use benchmarks in your brainstorming sessions, but don't let them become your sole source of inspiration at a strategic level.
