Social media is an essential branch of any marketing strategy, with 5.17 billion social media users worldwide on different platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Linkedin, X (formerly Twitter), and others still on the rise. Creating an efficient social media strategy implies tracking social media metrics correctly and establishing clear goals. Without accurate social metrics measurements, tracking performance and reaching desired results within an established timeframe is difficult. Keep reading to learn the social media metrics that matter and how to measure success in a way that increases your brand awareness and maximizes profits!

What are Social Media Metrics

Social media metrics are factors that track your business performance on social channels and how your content and marketing strategy impact your goals. These factors include content performance, campaigns on social media platforms, and engagement rates or the impact your strategy has on your target audience.

There are two types of social metrics that you need to keep in mind when you set your goal and create your strategy: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. Vanity metrics include likes, followers, and comments, and they tend to be the most chased by content creators and businesses. But without actionable metrics that include engagement and conversions, vanity metrics alone won’t help you reach your goals.

The Importance of Measuring Social Media Metrics

Tracking social media metrics is essential for monitoring the performance of your business on these platforms and reaching the business goals, profit, or audience retention you need to succeed. They help you adjust your strategy as needed and see its impact on your potential customers.

Also, through social metrics, companies can identify trends in their niche and adjust their strategy to stay on top of these waves and reach more visibility, brand awareness, and increased ROI.

Key Social Media Metrics to Track

Understanding the social media metrics to track helps you achieve your company’s objectives and build your social media marketing strategy on these channels. Here are the most important metrics to monitor according to your business goals!

Engagement Metrics

Social media engagement metrics show the frequency of user interactions with your content. They also show your audience’s level of interest (or lack of interest), which influences the algorithm of social platforms. Posts with a higher engagement rate will be promoted by the algorithm, while those with a lower rate will be removed from the algorithm.

The engagement rate measures the percentage of your audience that interacts with your content through likes, comments, and shares. When you define your audience, it’s important to consider that not only those who follow you will see your posts but also others who find your platform through your posts.

Reach and Impressions

Reach metrics, also known as social media brand awareness metrics, show you how many people you reach through your posts. When analyzing your reach, consider how much comes from your followers and non-followers. A high reach from non-followers shows a great position in the algorithm or a high number of shares.

Impressions tell you how many times the same users saw your posts. The impressions are usually higher than the reach, as many people will come across your posts more than once. If your impressions are significantly higher than your reach, more than double, it’s worth looking into it and understanding why users come back to your posts and whether they take an engagement action as a result. Some will follow you, like, share, or comment on your posts after they have seen them several times.

Conversion Metrics

Conversions are purchases, website clicks, and downloads through a social media post or ad. You want to pay extra attention to your conversion rates, as they show how efficient your social media campaigns are in feeding your funnel. They include both paid and organic conversions.

You can track your conversions using UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters, which are texts added to your links that help you track the source of your conversions. You can then calculate your conversion rate by dividing the total conversions by the number of clicks.

Other conversion metrics include:

  • Click-through rate (CTR): Show how often users interacted with your social posts with the intent to find out more about your brand, products, or services.
  • Cost-per-click (CPC): Represents your investment for each customer who clicks on your social media ad. If your conversions are high, it’s worth investing in a CPC campaign that will increase clicks to your website.
  • Cost per thousand impressions (CPM): Is focused on views rather than actions and calculates how much you invest per 1000 impressions.

Audience Metrics

Audience metrics are essential for understanding your type of customers and potential customers, which will help you improve your growth strategy. When it comes to audience metrics, you want to keep an eye on the following aspects:

  • Follower count and growth: Your number of followers is just as important as your follower growth. The higher your follower count, the higher your follower growth needs to be to maintain an ascendant path for your brand awareness and online visibility.
  • Demographics: Knowing your social media demographics, which include your audience’s gender, age, and location, will help you understand your followers and shape your content in a way that resonates with them.

Tracking Tools for Social Media Metrics

Tracking social metrics is challenging without the right social media analytics tools to help you speed up this complex process. Each social media platform has its own analytics tool to track metrics, but if you need more in-depth insights to adjust a solid marketing strategy and reach your objectives. Here are some social data analytics platforms that will help you streamline your social tracking with more advanced insights and stay on top of your niche:

  • Google Analytics: Is one of the free social media reporting tools and helps track both website and social media channels.
  • Sprout Social: Audience reporting and analytics for tracking key metrics in one place for multiple platforms.
  • BuzzSumo: Best for content performance tracking and identifying new trends to help you improve your content and reach a broader audience.

Social Metrics Tracking Tips

Here are important tips that will help you increase the efficiency of your social media metrics tracking process and how to use them:

  • The importance of constant reporting: Reports help you monitor your performance and progress and identify challenges and necessary adjustments to improve your marketing strategy.
  • Establish clear goals: Before you start measuring progress, it’s important to set clear and achievable objectives. Your business goals will determine how you create and implement your strategy and interpret your social metrics.
  • Identify trends: Finding the right current and new trends for your niche helps you adjust your content according to your audience’s behavior and preferences in a way that resonates better with your users.
  • A/B testing: Try out various content formulas, headlines, and strategies to see what has the best impact on social media users.

Conclusion

Social media metrics must be tracked constantly and incorporated efficiently into your marketing strategy by making the necessary changes to improve your results. Using the right tools to track key metrics can bring you closer to your audience and improve ROI by creating content that users resonate with and spark their interest for further engagement. For a professional social media marketing strategy and a smooth social metrics tracking process, reach out to the experts at BarkingFrogSEO and start your path of online growth!