Social media evaluation is a process by which a particular social networking presence is studied to determine how effective an individual's or a company’s social branding model is. Sometimes referred to as a social marketing evaluation, experts in the field cite that a few of the best ways to measure the effectiveness of a brand's social presence include the number of one-on-one interactions with relevant others, the number of questions received and answered via social media, and the number of click-throughs earned from social media efforts. Using a number of available social media tools may also help with things like tallying up a total number of followers, but experts warn that using such data alone may not offer a thorough social media evaluation.
While social media tools and websites are certainly used for casual entertainment, professional bloggers, corporations, entertainers and others use these vehicles to communicate with the public for more commercial purposes. In an effort to assure that time spent promoting a brand via social media is being effectively spent, it is important to perform a social media evaluation from time to time. Social media venues tend to vary in terms of how they can be evaluated, however, so it is important to employ multiple social media evaluation techniques to determine the effectiveness of a brand's reputation on the web and beyond.
A good social media evaluation extends beyond counting how many followers or subscribers a brand has managed to attract on a social media website. While this method is one of many social media evaluation techniques, it is not the only one, nor is it always the best one. Some people automatically follow those who initiate a following via social media. In some instances, a live person does not even select who to follow but, instead, this process is sometimes automated through the use of special software. Instead, experts recommend counting the number of times a brand was mentioned in conversations with others or how many questions were posed and addressed by a company via social media during a given time period.
Other social media evaluation techniques include conducting a social media analysis to determine how many visitors social media has attracted to a website. After attracting visitors to a site, it is also important to understand how long each person spent on the site, what activities they engaged in while there and which links on the site they actually clicked through to initiate a purchase or to request more information. By using these and similar social media evaluation tools, individuals and businesses using social media for branding purposes are able to identify areas of strength and improve upon weaknesses to create a more effective social media strategy.