There are so many free tools available for communicators that provide them with specific measures of success. But you need to choose the right tool for you.

Tools are available if you want to measure what your company cares about – like page content or responsiveness. You can measure the open rate of your newsletter. You can measure whether a call to action actually resulted in an action.

Most of the tools are very easy to understand. Don’t try to measure 20 things at one time. I recommend you choose 3 things to measure to begin with. And be prepared to measure consistently over a period of time. You’ve got to build trends to get a good picture of what is happening.

Let’s start with Google Analytics.

You can use this to see who visited your pages. You can see how they got to you (did they come from Facebook, Pinterest, or your newsletter). You can see what information they value the most. You can see what all caught their attention after they were on your pages. You can also see how long they stayed on your pages.

Next you have Social Analytics.

Facebook Insights allows you to track how your network is growing. You can see if there are particular types of posts that perform better than others. You can see how long visitors view your videos. Tracking reaches allows you to see how your message travels. Most importantly, you can tell from the likes and shares if you have an engaged audience. You can also track other businesses similar to yours and see how they are performing – this allows you to see what their customers are responding to and adjust accordingly.

Twitter analytics works basically the same way. There are 3 top reports to watch- tweet impression, mentions, and those linking to you. Like Facebook, you can also track which posts get the most traction and you can see who is sharing your content.

Finally, you have email analytics. This is especially easy to track if you use a mail provider like Mail Chimp. You can see if your subscription rate is growing. You can see if certain subject lines get more opens or if certain times are better to send. You can track layouts and see if different ones lead to more opens. There’s also a function that allows you to track whether a reader took action (clicked links, filled out forms, etc..) as well.