Businesses can gain valuable insights into their audience and competitors using social media analytics tools. This allows them to make factual, objective decisions that lead to growth.
To measure success, businesses must regularly monitor their metrics and assess the impact of their campaigns.
Companies often rely on social media industry benchmarks to gauge the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. This standard provides valuable insights into performance metrics and trends within the competitive landscape.
Here are some of the most important social media metrics to evaluate:
Reach
Social media reach is a top-funnel measurement that reveals how many people are exposed to content. Reach can help you identify the most effective strategies for building brand awareness and increasing interactions when paired with metrics like engagement and conversions.
Reach is typically available as a metric in the native analytics tools of each social network. Using a tool, you can also track reach and impressions across multiple social networks.
Engagement
At the most basic level, likes, +1s, and favorites acknowledge that followers are looking at your content. The next step up is engagement, which includes comments and shares.
Ultimately, you want to drive your engagement strategy to real business impact. This means tying your metrics to ROI and sentiment. This will help your team and outside stakeholders make sense of your reports.
Conversions
Social media conversions are a great way to measure your campaigns’ effectiveness. This metric measures the number of clicks on a specific call-to-action such as ‘buy now’ or ‘claim offer’ from a social post.
A clear understanding of metrics and what they mean for your business is essential. Creating a sharable glossary will help your team stay on the same page.
Engagement Rate
The engagement rate is another important social media metric to track. It shows how many people actively engage with your content through likes (or other reactions), comments, and shares over a specific period.
These metrics can provide valuable insights into how your content resonates with your audience, which can then inform your strategy moving forward. Use an engagement rate calculator or analytics tool to track this number.
Likes
Likes are a core metric for understanding how people respond to your social media posts. They help you gauge the effectiveness of your content and strategy in a specific timeframe.
Making social media data a cross-org asset helps everyone understand the importance of your social efforts and their impact on your business. Creating a sharable glossary of social media metrics that includes metric definitions and why they matter is the first step to breaking down silos around your social team.
Followers
New followers indicate that your content is reaching people and growing your audience. This is important because it can help you gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns.
However, don’t be too focused on the follower count. It is more important to focus on your community’s growth rate. This metric measures how fast you are gaining new followers each reporting period.
Retweets
Retweets are important to track because they show how much exposure your brand is getting. They also allow you to showcase industry leaders and experts by retweeting their content.
Awareness metrics focus on how many people saw your posts in a specific timeframe. This includes all views of your post, including those from users who didn’t click or comment. This metric often needs clarification with reach, which shows how many people saw your post.
Comments
A successful marketing strategy is only complete with the right metrics. Knowing which ones to track will help your agency optimize client campaigns, improve engagement, and show them social media ROI.
These top metrics may give you an approximate monetary return, but they will prove to managers and clients that your digital marketing efforts impact business growth.
Shares
Whether creating awareness or moving people through the funnel, brand mentions indicate where your content stands in the industry conversation. You can calculate the social share of voice (SSoV) by tallying your mentions and your competitors’.
Avoid the copy-paste shuffle by using analytics tools that automate your reporting process. With custom report builder capabilities, sharing your results is easy. This saves you time to focus on uncovering insights that matter to stakeholders.
CTR
CTR is one of the first-base social media metrics businesses often focus on. Keeping an eye on this metric can help you understand how effective your ads, listings, and keywords are.
Awareness metrics are crucial when measuring the impact of your content. Understanding these metrics can help you reach and engage more customers. Ultimately, this can translate to business growth.