Seven social media metrics you need to track. You might be on every single meaningful social media site out there but all your effort isn’t really worth anything unless you’re following what’s driving your results and what’s not. Trust me, there has been plenty of times I posted something out there and I thought that was great. Well, I gained no traction. Sure, I may have gotten some likes or impressions but those things really didn’t help my business grow.
So, what do I do after a post like that? I go to the numbers and not the big ones like, hey there are 4.5 billion users on social media according to a status that’s an obvious one and that doesn’t really help movYou might be the needle. When I’m talking about when say numbers I’m talking about the metrics, the essential ones that you know you need to track and you need to optimize to maximize your return on social media spend or just your time on social media.
Metric number one
is reached. This is an easy one. Reach is the number of people who see your content. It’s always important to ask yourself two main questions with this one, whether or not you’re reaching enough people. If you’re reaching enough people why aren’t they converting? Nearly 75% of the world’s population over the age of 13 uses social media. So, your audience is out there. Pay attention to an important subset of your reach. What percentage is made up of followers versus non-followers? What percentage is made up of followers within your ideal regions and age range that you’re targeting that’s the right fit to buy your product or service? If you’re targeting the wrong type of people you may want to adjust your content, look to see what some of your competitors do so that way you can target the right people and generate more sales.
Metric two,
impressions. Meta saw impressions grow 10% in 2021. Yes, if they’re seeing impressions grow in 2022 and 2023, and over time, numbers change. But when you think about this, if these social networks are seeing their percentages grow, your percentages should also grow. But on the flip side, if their percentages are decreasing and yours are decreasing, you’re like, wait, I’m not getting as many impressions. What am I doing wrong? Well, let’s say a social platform’s, you know, impressions decrease by 20%, but your impressions maintain flat. That means you’re doing something right. If they’re actually gaining users, you would be doing better, but that’s why tracking impressions are super important.
Metric three,
is the engagement rate. Facebook engagement rate benchmark is 0.06%. Instagram engagement rate benchmark is 0.68%. That just gives you an idea, you want to be doing better than your competition. Forget these bench, you know, mark stats, instead, the easiest way to figure out how you’re doing on all the social networks is to go look at your competition, see their engagement rate with how many likes and comments they’re getting per post based on how many followers they have. So if they get a thousand likes when they have a hundred thousand thousand followers, that’s a 1% engagement rate. If you’re doing better than your competition, you’re doing good.
Metric four,
amplification rate.The ratio of shares per post to the overall number of followers. Coined by Avinash Kaushik, the author, and digital marketer at Google, amplification is the rate at which your followers take your content and share it through their network. So, you want to really look at this because you can see what kind of content is helping you and which content isn’t really getting you the amplification that you’re looking for. You want to create more of the content that is getting you the amplification and less of the content that isn’t getting you much of it.
Metric five,
virality rate.Similar to amplification that it measures how much your content is shared, but the virality rate calculates share as a percentage of the impressions rather than as an impression of followers.
Metric six,
audience growth rate. How many new followers are you getting on social media over a certain period of time as a percentage of your total audience? Here’s a tip for you. If you want to grow your audience fast, get on TikTok.It’s the fastest-growing social network with 105% user growth in the US over the last couple of years.
Metric seven,
social referrals. According to HubSpot, consumers are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on social referrals. Now, social referrals are huge because it’s other people vouching for you saying your product or your service is good. Think of it as a version of a review or a rating on Amazon. That’s the same concept with let’s say, social referrals.
Read More: how to run TikTok ads in 2022
Now, a bonus metric for you, and this is the most important one which is why I really want to save it for last and this would technically be number eight, which is ROI. What is your ROI on social media? What posts are getting you the most return versus which posts are generating very little to nothing? And you can track this in Google Analytics. You can set up goals and conversion tracking.
Also, when someone completes a lead form or a purchase or buys a service from your signs you can also survey them and ask them how they find you and where they signed up from. This will give you an idea of what channels are giving you your biggest ROI. And if they said, hey, social media, well what posts on social media made you find me? They may remember, or they may not. But it all helps out, especially when you combine that with Google Analytics goal tracking.