Earlier this month, Jon Spenceley, Community Manager at Sprouter, joined  us for a webinar and after the session we had a quick chat about social media and what are the three important tips that nonprofit professionals should always keep in mind

Q: What are the three most important things to track in social media?

A: Your followers!  It's all about "your awesome supporters - not you". Always remember that you are talking to real people and be personal. Just like all humans, your followers love conversations and a feeling of connection.  So the three top things to keep in mind are all about your followers: quality, demographics and engagement.

Quality over quantity is the first and the only rule; you want to have genuine followers who are devoted to your cause. It's better to have 10 real people who liked your Facebook page (or followed you on other channels), who are engaged and interested in your content than hundreds and hundreds of followers who may not even be real people. Don't be discouraged if the list of your followers is growing slowly, as long as they are your passionate supporters you are on the right track.

Know your followers.  There are a lot of tools you can use to track the demographics of your supporters on social media; Google Analytics and Hootsuite, just to name two of the most popular ones. The trick is to ask the right question and to understand how your followers on Twitter differ from your fans on Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and other social networks. Once you define your relationship with your supporters you can better tailor your message and inspire donors to support your organization's mission.

Engagement.  This is one of the key metrics to track and measure in social media. Listen to your supporters and track how many people are talking about you; track your brand across video and photo sharing sites.  Most of the time there are two ways people participate in the discussion: share or comment. Make a note of the content that generates most comments; pay attention to what your followers are doing to  repost or share your messages. Be open to doing small test and experiments, follow your curiosity and trust your intuition.

Join us for this week's webinar with Rethink Breast Cancer "Is Social Media Worth The Effort For Nonprofits?

What tools do you use when measuring social engagement? Please share your best practices in the comments!