At this point in the history of the internet, many people would say that an entity absolutely cannot succeed without maintaining some social media and online presence. (It's a fascinating debate, and inspired us to grow Marstin entirely by word-of-mouth, without any website or online marketing, which we did successfully for 6 years.)
While you may or may not agree with the idea of social media as a "necessity," with these expectations being widespread, it creates an interesting situation. Basically any business, nonprofit or other entity essentially needs to not only be experts at what they do, but also (at least competent, or able to pay for) content creation. There are countless examples of brands using social media to make money and spread influence, with and without the help of paid ads.
And, simultaneously, over the years, my clients have told me how confusing, overwhelming, stressful, draining – and most notably, ineffective – it can be to invest time, energy and resources into social media, and still struggle to tangibly and measurably reach their goals.
If everyone needs to be on social media in order to succeed, then where's the disconnect?
The attention economy is a concept that describes the way humans manage the wealth of information available to them, focusing on the competition for their attention as it becomes an increasingly scarce commodity. This idea was first introduced by economist and Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon in 1971, who noted that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
In today’s digital age, the attention economy is particularly relevant because companies and platforms compete fiercely to capture and maintain users’ attention, often through sophisticated techniques such as notifications, targeted content, and personalized feeds. These methods are designed to keep users engaged and to collect data that can be used to further refine and target content, thereby increasing the platform’s ability to attract more users and generate revenue through advertising.
“I like to say that algorithms are opinions embedded in code. And that algorithms are not objective. Algorithms are optimized to some definition of success. So if you can imagine, if a commercial enterprise builds an algorithm, to their definition of success, it’s a commercial interest. It’s usually profit.” – Dr. Cathy O’Neil, Data Scientist
“We’re the product. Our attention is the product being sold to advertisers.” – Justin Rosenstein, former engineer Facebook and Google, co-founder of Asana
Unless you haven't been paying attention, it’s no secret that social media is engineered to be addictive and keep users in the app. And while “content is king” in the online realms, and accounts that get tons of followers and likes seem to reign supreme, engagement statistics are only numbers and don’t necessarily translate to users taking action.
So how does a brand know when what they're posting online is actually working, and when all that content isn't giving them a legitimate ROI?
Examples and screenshots are a product of data and content analysis for South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL), a non-profit in Nevada County, CA, March 2023 – June 2023.
By monitoring content performance metrics and tracking user engagement from discovery to conversion, we can better understand how a brand's content and online presence can more effectively inspire their community and support their success, despite the pitfalls of social media.
Through digital media, whether interacting with users en mass or on an
individual level, there is always an exchange happening through the content. In very
abstract terms, posts can be giving energy, asking for energy, or doing a mixture of
both. It's at once an art and a science for brands to find an effective balance
between the two, so that everyone wins and feels like they got value out of the
exchange, which creates perpetual success.
By categorizing content in this way, you can bring more clarity to what users engage
with, how they engage with it, and where this engagement is most prevalent. How does
your content make your audience feel, and how does this tie in with your
goals?
We have to start by first identifying the means through which a brand delivers value to its audience. This, of course, depends on the brand, and usually includes tangible things like offers, work and mission, services, products, etc – but most importantly here, we're looking at the content itself as a means of delivering value. What does a user get out of having your posts in their feed? Is your content inspirational, educational, relatable, controversial? So in that sense, what kinds of "Value Presentations" does your brand publish?
By evaluating content performance qualitatively, rather than looking at overview statistics, I was able to pinpoint what SYRCL’s audience responded to on social media, which offered useful insights on what they value and take interest in with SYRCL’s work.
For a 3 month period, I curated a social media calendar with a mix of Value Presentations and Calls-to-Action. With Google Analytics, Meta, Twitter and LinkedIn's analytics, I could get a general sense of user engagement using Traffic Source / Medium, Page Views, Reach, Impressions, Engagement/Interactions and Click-Thru-Rate as metrics. Four themes emerged consistently as the most “engaging” across all social media platforms and website, garnering the most Interactions on:
This foundational overview provided direction for future content development. It also highlighted where more data was needed to understand SYRCL’s audience and how SYRCL’s content can create the desired engagement with its social media audiences.
On the flip side, there are concrete interactions users make to dedicate time, labor, money, or attention to support a brand's continued existence. Observing and tracking a user’s journey from discovery to conversion allows us to understand where a user finds the motivation they need to take action.
One of the most important aspects of measuring meaningful engagement with calls-to-action is to have tangible methods in place for capturing “conversion.” For SYRCL, not all of the calls-to-action that were being promoted on social media and via email newsletter had a specific capture point. I identified SYRCL's success metrics for this three-month period and implemented UTM tracking and capture points wherever possible.
While not all calls-to-action were able to be definitively tracked due to inter-departmental strategic differences, we were still able to gather very useful data about general social media engagement vs. practical engagement for content that contained Calls-to-Action.
| Call-to-Action | SYRCL "Theme" | Capture Point |
|---|---|---|
| Sign the “No-Mine” Petition | Advocate | Petition signatures |
| Join the Scotch Broom Challenge | Unite: Volunteer | Sign-ups via website form |
| Attend State of the Yuba | Unite: Events | Optional RSVP via website form |
| Volunteer at State of the Yuba | Unite: Volunteer | Direct contact with SYRCL |
| Apply for Executive Director | N/A | Bamboo application |
| Attend the May 10th Planning Commission for the Idaho-Maryland Mine | Advocate | N/A |
| Apply to Become a River Captain | Unite: Volunteer | Volunteer Local application |
| Sign Up to Volunteer as a River Ambassador | Unite: Volunteer | Volunteer Local application |
| Attend the River Ambassador Open House | Unite: Volunteer | N/A |
| Attend the River Ambassador and River Captain Training | Unite: Volunteer | N/A |
| Buy Tickets for Wild for the Yuba | Unite: Events | Sales via Salsa |
| Volunteer at State of the Yuba | Unite: Volunteer | Direct contact with SYRCL |
| Attend Castle Valley Trailhead Meeting | Advocate | N/A |
| Submit Castle Valley Trailhead Survey | Advocate | Survey submissions via Office365 |
While several of these calls-to-action generated high social media engagement, we found almost no direct connection with users taking the suggested action.
Oddly enough, there were even examples like the Scotch Broom Challenge (below) that received “higher than typical” engagement all across the board – likes, comments, shares, and saves – but the call-to-action on social media wasn’t converting. Despite the response on Instagram, only a handful of people visited the signup form.
In contrast, an email newsletter from April 6th drove ~30 people to the signup page. The graph below depicts the top traffic-driving sources to the signup page.
Screenshot from Google Analytics
Screenshot of the Scotch Broom Challenge engagement statistics for Instagram.
After 3 months of analyzing data from SYRCL's social channels, Google Analytics, email campaign reports and user surveys, it became clear the most effective mediums for driving conversions were not social media. In fact, buttons from the SYRCL website and email campaigns proved to be overwhelmingly more effective at inspiring SYRCL’s audience to take action, especially for volunteering and event-related CTAs.
In SYRCL's case, while there was seemingly healthy engagement and growth happening their social media platforms, the data from this period indicated that the outreach was receiving generally passive engagement from their followers and not directly supporting the organization in return.
While this may not sound like the most savory of discoveries, the truth is, if your content isn't producing the intended effect, it's a fantastic thing to figure this out sooner rather than later. Once you have clear data to demonstrate what kinds of Value Presentations land well with your audience, and how users are engaging (or disengaging) with your Calls-to-Action, you can start making iterative changes to improve conversion rates.
If social media isn't giving you a return on your investment,
