If you are serious about growing your social media presence, you need to understand your metrics. These metrics will show you a picture of the performance of your social media account. They can tell you if your campaigns are working or if you need to tweak them for better results. This guide will show you the social media metrics to track and how to use them to improve your campaigns.
Key Social Media Metrics to Track
Here are the leading social media metrics you should keep track of:
Followers Growth Rate
If there is a metric that tells a complete story about the overall performance of your social media account, then it’s the follower’s growth rate. To calculate this metric, divide the number of followers gained in a particular period by the number of followers you had before the gain.
If your followers’ number is increasing, it shows growth in your social media account. But if it has stagnated or is declining, there is something you aren’t doing right. You may need to change your overall social media strategy.
Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is the percentage of likes, comments, and shares your posts get compared to your total audience size. The audience size could be your followers. However, not all your followers will see your posts, so your audience differs from the engagement rate. A better way to determine engagement is by dividing all the likes, comments, and shares by the number of followers and multiplying the results by 100. You should have a good plan for boosting engagement on Instagram and other fast-growing social media sites.
Amplification Rate
This refers to the number of post shares as a percentage of the total number of followers. A higher amplification rate will help your follower count to grow at a higher rate. It can be a good metric for measuring video performance.
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times your posts are shown to a user. This is an important metric, indicating if your content reaches its target audience. Remember that one follower can have more than one impression. Getting a good impression rate can make your brand more popular. Remember that impressions are usually higher than reach because one person can see the post several times.
Reach
This refers to the number of people who see your content. Reach is a good metric to track because it will show the level and kind of exposure your brand is getting. You should measure your average reach and the reach of each post. Also, track the number of followers vs. nonfollowers reached by your posts. If a huge number of non-followers are getting reached by your content, it means this is being shared.
Video Completion Rate
While video views are great metrics, they do not provide information on whether someone completed watching the video. The video completion rate will show the percentage of people who watch your video to completion. It is also a primary social media signal affecting ranking, so you must work to improve it. This is also a great metric to track, showing if your content resonates with your audience.
Click-through Rate
The click-through rate will show the number of times a user sees your link and clicks on it to visit your website. To get this figure, divide the number of link clicks by the number of impressions. Your content isn’t resonating with the target audience if your clickthrough rate is low.
Brand mentions
This refers to the number of times social media users mention your brand in comments, tags, or shares. You should track if these mentions are positive or negative to get feedback. You can then engage with your audience and solve issues that can spoil your brand.
Response Rate
This refers to the percentage of your audience that you are responding to through messages and comments. For instance, if your account receives ten comments and ten messages and responds to 5, your response rate is 25%.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate refers to a social media user’s action after reading your post. The action could be buying a product, subscribing to a newsletter, downloading an ebook, and more. Tracking this metric is essential as it will help you know if your campaigns(paid and organic) are bearing fruits. You can read our guide on increasing conversion on Facebook.
Cost-per click
This is the amount of money you pay when a social media user clicks on your ad. Depending on your conversion rate, it will show you if your SEO strategies are working or not. You may need to change your strategy if you have a high cost per click but a low impression.
Final Thoughts
You can get critical data by tracking social media metrics to achieve your goal. By monitoring the above metrics, you can tell if your social media campaigns are working.
