ID3AS Blog

The world of social media metrics can be confusing. From follower counts to post engagements. You may be wondering what you should track and what metrics are beneficial to your business. Allow the Social Media Gurus at D3 to guide you through the key metrics that you should pay attention to. Gain a stronger understanding of your business’s social media performance by first understanding what social media metrics are and why they’re so important. 

First, defining your social media goals will help to determine the metrics you should focus on. Goal-related metrics will help you tell if your company is hitting the mark, or if you need a few adjustments. Social media metrics can help you measure the success of a campaign, and also keep you aware of your brand health. 

Social data are vast, but all metrics have meaning. Consider the following guides to better understand which metrics you should follow and their potential impact on your brand’s social media strategy. 

Awareness

Impressions and reach are often confused, but both are important metrics to track. Reach is the total number of people who see your content. For example, if 100 people have seen your post, that means that your post’s reach is 100. Impressions refer to the number of times your content is displayed. For example, if your post popped up on those 100 people’s screens 3 times each, then your impressions for that post would be 300. Impressions and reach tell you different things about each of your social media posts. Using both of these metrics together can help determine the overall effectiveness of your content. 

Tracking your audience growth on each of your social networks will also help you determine the average rate of increase, or decrease, in your social media followers over time. Use this to help you identify which networks are generating the greatest growth and learn how to apply that success to other networks. Audience growth can also be helpful in measuring if your content is reaching your target audience.

Engagement

Engagement ultimately boils down to the rate at which accounts are interacting with your posts. High engagement rates help indicate the health of your audience, or how many of your followers are “real” and engaged with your brand. 

Individual engagement metrics, such as likes, comments, and shares add up. Looking at this combination of metrics is a great way to learn how you can tailor a post to meet your goals. For example, a beautiful image and caption may receive a lot of likes, but not as many shares or comments because there wasn’t a call to action - this post still performs well if your goal was increased likes. However, if there was a call to action that encouraged your followers to leave a comment, then the lack thereof could mean the overall post was ineffective.

Organic mentions indicate a higher level of brand awareness and engaged users. Mentions can include comment tags, story tags, or tagging your brand in a post. 

If your goal is to receive more engagement on your social media posts, then consider which of your posts have the highest engagement rates, and then find similarities among these posts so you can determine which elements appeal to your audience. This will help you further optimize future content to resonate with your target audience.

Return on Investment

Measuring your social media return on investment (ROI) is key to showing you what’s working, and what’s not. Generally speaking, social media ROI is the sum of all social media actions that create value. After the time, money, and resources are put into your social media efforts, what’s the return? 

This value isn’t always measured by dollars and cents. Ask yourself: what did your target audience do after exposure to your campaign? Did they go to your site and purchase a product? Did they make their Friday night dinner plans to visit your restaurant? Site referrals are helpful to monitor how many people are going to your website after visiting your social media page. Also, consider your conversion rate on posts with a call-to-action link to determine how well your campaigns are performing, and how many of your sales have resulted from social media. 

Customer Service

The performances of posts across your social media accounts are important, but what about your customer’s experience with your brand, and how you’re performing? Tracking how quickly your team is responding to messages is important in developing trust and loyalty between your brand and your customers. Appropriate and timely responses increase the likelihood that they will become return customers and advocates of your brand! 

To recap, metrics are important because they tell you if a campaign or strategy is successful over time. Do you want to start measuring your social media success? Contact the Social Media Experts at D3 for more information on how you can capitalize on your social strategy.