So, you’ve set up social media profiles for your business, started posting, and you may even have started accumulating page followers or likes, depending on the platform(s) you’re using. But, we’re afraid your work isn’t done.
How can you be sure your efforts are working, or more importantly, paying off if you aren’t measuring your results? This is where social media metrics come into play. They’re essential to understanding your performance across social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. Let’s dive into the different metrics you should be tracking so you can improve your social media presence and in turn, continue to grow your business.
Although considered a “vanity metric,” (i.e. a metric that makes you look good to others but doesn’t necessarily help you optimize your campaigns) reach is still one of the first things you’ll want to keep an eye on in terms of social media metrics. Reach means exactly what you’d think: the total number of users that viewed your post or ad.
Of course, the higher the number the better. Reach won’t necessarily tell you how well your content is resonating in terms of ROI or profitability, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. Understanding your reach will help you determine far more important metrics – like engagement.
A healthy reach for your social media post or ad will vary based on the size of your business and following. Comparing the reach of all of your posts/ ads on any given platform will help you to find a healthy range for your specific profiles. Digging into industry benchmarks for your business can help give you a starting point for judging the health of your social media channel reach.
Another basic social media metric you should begin tracking is engagement. In the case of this number, basic does not mean unimportant. In fact, improving your engagement rate over time should be the goal of your overall social media strategy. An engagement is essentially an interaction between a platform user and your business page. Engagements can be in the form of likes, shares, and comments and can provide a ton of insight into your page’s performance.
The higher your channel’s engagement rate, the greater your page visibility – which means more new visitors discovering your page and content. You always want to strive for better engagement, however, engagements don’t necessarily translate to sales. This is where conversions come into the picture.
This is where we get down to the real money-maker: conversions! A conversion is a marketing objective that a user completes such as subscribing to a mailing list, filling out a contact form, or even placing an order on your website. Conversions are where we start to see a return on investment for your time (and money spent on social advertising) and are a crucial step in gaining new customers or re-engaging existing ones.
Conversion Rate is a metric that you’ll want to pay close attention to in terms of social media and can be calculated by dividing the number of visitors to a website, or in our case, views of the post or ad, by the total number of users that made the conversion. And don’t worry if you think the number seems a bit shy. A healthy conversion rate for an ad on social media is between 2% and 5%.
Now that we have established the most important social media metrics to track, let’s define how to track them. If we are talking Facebook or Instagram, basic metrics or “Insights” such as engagement rate are provided for us in the Facebook Business Suite or under the “Insights” button on your Instagram business profile. However, if you’d like a deeper dive into metrics for all of the platforms your business uses, you can use several online tools such as HubSpot, Google Analytics, and Hootsuite.
We’ve outlined the three top metrics you should track, but don’t think it stops there. There are tons of other metrics that can provide helpful insight into your business and its social profiles. Need help organizing and tracking your social media metrics? We can help with that.
