Social Media Benchmarks for the Green Industry

1Center for RuralEnterprise Engagement

Social Media Benchmarksa guide for the green industry

Center for Rural Enterprise Engagement


Facebook

E-newsletter

Website


ROI can be complicated.

Benchmarks allow comparisons.

Benchmarks can be descriptiveand prescriptive data.

Why Benchmarks?Social Media is Different


Types of Social Media BenchmarksWhere You Have Been Should Inform Where You’re Going

AspirationalLooking to industry leaders or campaigns for ideas and benchmarks.

CompetitiveUsing your competitors’ stats to create benchmarks for your business.

Aspirational Competitive Trending Historical

TrendingGenerating new benchmarks based off trends in your data and forecasting the future.

HistoricalCreating benchmarks off past campaigns.


What is your mission?What are you hoping to get out of your social media marketing?- Increased brand awareness?- Generating deeper relationships?- Increased referrals to website?- Lead generation?- Direct sales?

Is it applicable?- Will this metric or benchmark help me make decisions that will impact this mission?- Will this data and benchmark

- help me make decisions to generate more leads? - help me engage my fans at a higher level?- help me direct more consumers to a specific call to action?

Questions That Guide Benchmarks


FacebookData-Driven Benchmarks

7Center for RuralEnterprise Engagement Facebook Benchmarks

Post Reach

Initial Benchmark• InitialReach:>25%offans• Goodcontentshouldresultin

areachthatisgreaterthanyournumberoffans.

Improve by• determiningpostingtimes

byusingFacebookInsights.


Benchmark

Page GrowthThe number of likes you have is a USELESS statistic. Measure GROWTH over time.

• Pages with over 1,000 fans experience a .5% growth every month.

• Pages with fewer than 1,000 fans experience a 1.5% growth every month.

Improve by• integrating Facebook follow recommendations

on all marketing material.• training employees to encourage “joining our

Facebook community”.• Running paid advertisements.• creating highly “shareable” content.

9Center for RuralEnterprise Engagement Post and Page Engagement Rate

ü Engagement rate shows the relative value of your content. ü How USEFUL is your page to your target audience?ü Measure every month on a post and page level.



Competitive Benchmark• Compare your engagement rate to the industry average and your

competition.• This benchmark will show you how well you engage your fans

compared to your competition.

•Formula: (Likes + Comments + Shares) / Total Fans•Industry average is between 1-2%.



Trending Benchmark• Compare how different forms of content engage your fans.• Identify how useful your content is to your target audience.

•Formula: (Likes + Comments + Shares + Clicks) / Reach•Industry average is 10% for pages with >1,000 fans.



Improve by• posting more high-quality visual content and fewer status updates.• using analytics to determine what subject matter resonates with

your audience. • posting when your audience is online.

13Center for RuralEnterprise Engagement Finding Your Engagement Rate

Find out how to measure your engagement rate at tinyurl.com/FacebookAnalytics


Calculating Engagement Rate for a Competitive Analysis

Finding Your Engagement Rate

• (Likes + Comments + Shares) / Fans• (5 Likes + 1 Comment + 3 Shares) / 111 Fans• Engagement Rate = 8.1%


Calculating Your Engagement to Determine Content Value

Finding Your Engagement

• (Likes + Comments + Clicks + Shares) / reach• (160 likes + 7 comments + 6 shares + 409 clicks) / 4,505 reached• Engagement Rate = 13%


Conduct an analysis of all your content for the quarter by using the “Export to Excel” feature in Facebook Insights.

Finding Your Engagement


Paid Advertisements

Improve by

Facebook BenchmarksPaid Advertisement

• Facebook is the most specific and efficient target marketing platform in the history of mankind.

• Facebook ads are also very cheap compared to all other means of advertising.

• Benchmarks• Cost per 1,000 impressions: $3.50 - $4.00• Cost per click: 45-55 cents• Cost per like: Approximately $1

• using your Facebook page as a focus group to identify valuable content.

• boosting the highest engaging posts to attract new fans (trending benchmark).

• using targeted advertisements.


E-NewslettersData-driven Benchmarks

19Center for RuralEnterprise Engagement E-Newsletter

Open Rates

Open Rate• Misleading statistic.• 20-23%

Improve by• Improving titles of emails.• Ask to be “Whitelisted”.• Clean up old email lists.

Read more about improving your newsletter at http://tinyurl.com/RETAILWORKS


Click Through

Click Rate• Most important metric• Average is 4.5%• Identifies if audience is

engaged or just looking for a coupon.

Improve by• Limit to ONE call to action.• Use short-form content

that links to your blog or website.

• Keep to three stories.


Overall Health

Subscriber Rating

• Growth of 4 & 5-star users.• Drop in 1 & 2-star users.

Improve by• segmenting email lists.• creating quality content.• including periodic coupons. • tracking purchase history of

each subscriber at POS.


List Growth

List Growth• Always increasing,

especially during Spring.

Improve by• including a signup at the

POS.• training employees to

collect email addresses.


Your WebsiteData-Driven Benchmarks

24Center for RuralEnterprise Engagement Your Website

There are too many benchmarks to list.

When measuring • Break down ALL Google

Analytics by location. • Focus only on the metrics

that match your target locations.

Benchmarks• Increased unique visits• Increased returning visitors• Increased time spent on site• Increased page sessions• Increased social referrals• Increase in organic search• Decreased bounce rate

25Center for RuralEnterprise Engagement Final Suggestions

1. Establishwhatbenchmarksareimportanttoyourbusiness.

2. Identifytheappropriatemetrics.1. Startwithindustryaverages.

3. Measureroutinelyandmeasureoften.4. Usethedatatomakepositivechanges

andsetnewbenchmarks.5. Evaluateagain.

Visitourlearningresourcesandgiveusacall.We’reallinthistogether.


[email protected]

785-532-1173www.k-state.edu/CREE

Learning Resourcewww.ruralengagement.org

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Small Business & Entrepreneurship

Social Media Benchmarks for the Green Industry