Let’s face it! When it comes to social media metrics, it’s confusing and overwhelming. Every week there seems to be a new metric created. Luckily, your social media goals will help determine which metrics are most important to you and your business. For every goal you create, you need a related metric so you know if your social strategy is actually working. That’s why they’re often referred to as Key Performance Indicators or KPI’s. They indicate and measure the performance of your strategy.
But, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, there are basic metrics you should always keep in mind. This way you can focus on the metrics that matter most when determining how successful your campaigns are and how well your social media strategy is performing. Ultimately, you want to be able to use these metrics to prove the impact your social media strategy has had on your overall business. Because, remember – social media is just one part of your marketing strategy.
Key Performance Indicators
Measuring the right social media metrics is a science and tools like Twitter Analytics or Facebook Insights will help you dive into your data. Free tools like these or paid solutions can help you consistently track your performance. But in a sea of metrics, which ones are most important?
We broke it down to 5 must-have categories:
1. Awareness: Number of Followers, Reach, and Impressions
If your goals are brand awareness or how people perceive your brand, these are important metrics to follow.
The number of followers you have is a vanity metric. Although it’s important, you may also have a large number of followers with no engagement or reach. Take a deeper dive into your impressions and reach to see if your content is successful. Impressions are how many times your post shows up in someone’s timeline. While reach is the number of unique viewers your post could have.
To really understand how well your content is performing, you will want to take into account engagement. For example, your post could have high impressions, but a low engagement number – meaning your post wasn’t interesting enough for your audience to take action.
2. Engagement: Clicks, Likes, Shares, and Comments
Engagement will monitor how connected your audience is with your content and the effectiveness of it. An engaged audience will interact with your business through clicks, likes, shares, or comments.The higher the engagement rate, the more responsive your audience is to your content types. Engagement can be broken down into:
- Likes, shares, comments, and etc.: These are individual engagement metrics.
- Post engagement metric: The number of engagements divided by impression or reach. A high rate means people who see the post find it interesting enough to like, share, or comment.
- Account mentions: These can indicate good brand awareness, especially if they are mentions that aren’t part of a reply.
Engagement rate, worked out on one post
A big number on its own tells you nothing. You need the math behind it.
Say you published two posts last week. Post A reached 4,000 people and earned 40 likes, comments, shares, and clicks combined. Post B reached 600 people and earned 36. Post A looks like the winner in a screenshot. Run the rate. Post A is 40 divided by 4,000, which is 1 percent. Post B is 36 divided by 600, which is 6 percent.
Post B hit a nerve with the people who saw it. Post A got shown around and mostly ignored. So you write more like Post B, and you look hard at what pushed Post A's reach, because the best next post has B's topic and A's distribution.
Do this for your top five and bottom five posts each month. Ten rows in a spreadsheet. The pattern shows up fast.
3. Share of Voice: Volume and Sentiment
Share of voice will show how many people are talking about your business compared to your competitors. This is often an ongoing goal, because you’ll always want to be on top of how well your business is doing against your competitors.4. ROI: Referrals and Conversions
If you are a business that offers a product or service to consumers, this is an important metric to follow.Referrals are how someone lands on your website. Often in your tools, they will be broken down by sources. Conversions are when someone actually purchases something from your website.
When looking at your referrals and conversions, you will also take into consideration your click-through rate (CTR) in your ads and posts. The higher the CTR, the more effective your ad or post is. You can monitor your CTR in your emails, paid advertisements, landing page links, social media, website buttons, and any other call-to-action buttons. Hand in hand with CTRs is the bounce rate. That is the percentage of visitors who click on a link in your posts, or ads, or emails, only to quickly leave the page without taking action. Take a look at these metrics to better understand how well your content is performing.
5. Customer Care: Response Rate and Time
Last but not least is the customer’s experience with your business.Response rate and time monitors how quickly your team responds to messages and how many they respond to. You’ll want to make sure that your customers are being replied to in a timely manner. It’ll help with your overall customer satisfaction and conversions.
This is just an overview of the essential metrics that matter for most businesses. A combination of these will provide you with the visibility you need of your social media performance and most importantly, of the impact to your bottom-line. Because at the heart of great marketing is the data to back it up.
The Monday morning report nobody acts on
You know this meeting. Someone shares a slide with fourteen metrics. Followers are up. Impressions are down. Everyone nods. Nobody changes a single thing they do that week.
A report that changes nothing is a waste of an hour. The fix is to tie each goal to one number and one decision. If the goal is leads, the number is conversions from social traffic, and the decision is which post type gets repeated. If the goal is awareness, the number is reach among the right audience, and the decision is where the next piece of content goes.
One goal. One number. One decision. Write all three at the top of the report before any chart.
Which metrics to stop tracking
Here is the rule we use. If a metric could double or get cut in half and you would do nothing differently, stop reporting it.
For most small B2B firms that means follower count and raw impressions come off the front page. Keep them in a tab for context. Lead with the numbers that move money, which are clicks to your site, conversions, and how fast you answer people. For the website side of the same question, read the 5 website engagement metrics that matter for B2B.
Frequently asked questions
What is a social media KPI? A social media KPI is a single measurable number that tells you whether your social media activity is moving a specific business goal. Examples include engagement rate for audience interest, conversions for revenue, and response time for customer care. A number only counts as a KPI when it is tied to a goal and changes what you do next.
How do I calculate engagement rate on a social media post? Calculate engagement rate by dividing a post's total engagements by its reach or impressions, then multiplying by 100. Engagements are likes, comments, shares, and clicks added together. A post with 36 engagements and a reach of 600 has a 6 percent engagement rate. Use the same denominator every time so your posts can be compared fairly.
How do I choose which social media metrics to track? Choose social media metrics by starting with the business goal, then picking the one number that proves progress toward it. Awareness goals point to reach, interest goals point to engagement rate, and revenue goals point to referral traffic and conversions. Three to five metrics is plenty for a small team. More than that and nobody acts on any of them.
What is the most common mistake in measuring social media? The most common mistake in measuring social media is reporting vanity metrics, such as follower count and impressions, as if they were results. Those numbers can rise while leads stay flat. Pair every awareness number with an engagement or conversion number, and drop any metric that would not change a decision if it moved.
How often should I review social media metrics? Review social media metrics once a month for decisions and once a week for a quick check on response time and anything unusual. Monthly reviews give posts enough time to gather data and show patterns. Compare your top and bottom posts each month, then adjust the next month's content based on what the comparison shows.