David Alson says that “ Social media is not a media. The key is to listen, engage, and build relationships”. Social media metrics is to to help you grow and achieve your goals on social media. Hence, you have to pay attention to what your audience love and engage with and to track this, you have to check the social media metrics to know what is working or not. It’s common practice for brands and their marketers to just post on social media without tracking the important social media metrics or not tracking the growth of their online presence to make informed media strategy decisions. These social media metrics are important to assess and audit your online presence.
In this article, we would be itemising the top social media platforms and digital marketing platforms, the importance of tracking the social media metrics, and the important metrics to focus on that can change your brand image.
14 Important Social Media Metrics To Track On Social Media.
You can use the following social media metrics as your key performance indicators across different social media platforms. Also, with extra analytics software and tracker beyond the ones the social media platforms provide, you are able to assess your business brand awareness, engagement, and customer satisfaction.
- Impressions
This is the number of times your post was shown to your audience. This social media metric can be measured for free across all social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. This helps the business owner know the number of times his or her post is shown to their audiences. This can also help you understand how your post was shown which can be through hashtags, home, explore page or profile. This social media metric can also be used to know if the page has been shadow banned or not
Reach
This indicates the number of individuals who saw your post. An individual can view your post twice or more but would be counted as just one individual under reach. More reach equates to more potential leads seeing your content and possible sales.Reach and Impression may seem alike however the difference between both of them is that the reach defines how many people saw your post while Impression defines the total number of times a post was seen. This social media metric feature is available on almost all the social media platforms analytics sections like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Follows
Another social media metric to track is how many followers were gained or lost. It indicates how many people enjoy your content to take the action to follow to keep seeing your content. It is important to track this to suggest the type of content you post and categorizes the kind of people who enjoy your content. More followers translates to more potential leads for the business. The Follow metric is also available on all social media platforms.
- Likes
Do you wonder why some posts have more or less likes in some posts than others? Your audience clicks the like button to show they enjoy your content. You can use this to track what content receives more engagement than the other. It is an encouragement to the business owner to create more content that appeals to their audience. It is available on all social media platforms.
- Shares
People share relatable content so you can use this social media metric to track how relatable and authentic the posts you share are to your target audience. Shares is a feature that gives your post and page free visibility and attract leads you may not have reached. The share metric also helps to amplify your reach to other social media platforms. This is available on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.
- Save
Another social media metric that serious marketers consider is the save button. It is proven that people save content they find useful and would love to return to soon.
Informative and educative content form the bulk of content that is most likely to be saved across social media platforms. These platforms promote your content to other potential target audiences when they notice that a particular content is frequently saved. This metric is readily available on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
- Comments
Keeping a conversation going in the comments section is a great feat but is rarely tracked by some social media managers. People only stop to leave their opinions on a post when they can relate to it or share their experiences.
This is a great way to measure engagement on a post.
As a general industry rule,engagement rate on Instagram usually is between 1% and 3%. And this covers likes and comments.
Content that asks engaging questions and/or invite the audience to share their feedback on a story can keep people commenting on your page. Posts that get lots of comments also get more visibility. All platforms have this feature.
- Retweet
The retweet button helps increase the reach of a tweet. This has the potential to make it go viral. This is like a form of share button that helps others see and interact with a post not on their timeline. To earn a retweet, ensure your content is “retweet-worthy” and engaging. This is a metric tracker available on Twitter.
- Virality rate
Virality goes beyond likes, follows, or comments. You can calculate the virality rate: the total number of shares is divided by total impressions and multiplied by 100. Hence, the more people share your posts, the more likely they will go viral. There are a number of reasons why a post go viral but at the core is sparking emotions. The emotions may either be postive or negative and this prompts people to share and give their opinion so much it makes the round. You can get this rate on Hootsuite.
- Amplification rate
This rate represents the rate at which a targeted audience shares your content with their network. This shows how much your audience is willing to engage and identify your brand. You can calculate this by the total number of times the audience shared your post in a month. Then divide this number by the number of followers you currently have. This gives you the amplification percentage. This social media metric can be found on Hootsuite.
- Share of voice
This helps to show how visible and memorable your brand or business is within the industry. This looks beyond how much you are doing to how well you are perform when compared to your competitors.This is calculated by measuring all direct and indirect mentions of your brand in a month using your handle or brand name across all active social media platforms.
Repeat the same for your competitors. Divide your total mentions by the total mentions of your competitors including yours and multiply by 100. This helps to know your share of voice percentage. You can find this metric on Sprout Social.
- Audience growth rate
This shifts the focus from how much your audience is growing to how fast your audience is growing. To calculate this, add up your net follower growth on all platforms for the previous month then divide this by the total audience on your active social platforms and multiply by 100 to get a percentage. You can do this for all of your competitors for comparative purposes. This is available on Hootsuite.
- Conversion rate
This measures how regularly your content converts to a subscription, download, or sale. This is a crucial metric because it shows how valuable your content is feeding your funnel. You calculate this by the number of conversions divided by total clicks then you multiply by 100 to get the percentage. Google Analytics and Buzzs umo helps with this metric.
- Click-through rate (CTR)
This shows how often your post is being clicked to access additional content. This could be your blog post or online store. This gives you a sense of how much your social content promotes your offering. You get this by dividing the number of total clicks by the total impressions and multiplying by 100 to get this in a percentage. This social media metric is available on Google Analytics.
5 Free Social Media Metrics Analytics Tools By Platforms
Metrics available on Instagram are Likes, comment, save, share, reach, impressions, etc.
Below is an example of how
This platform has free metrics you can track for your growth. It has metrics like comment, like, retweet, engagements, followers, profile visits, links, etc. Below is sample
Facebook has lots of free metrics you can track in the insights. Metrics like likes, shares, comments, saves, messages, follow, etc.Below is an example
- Tiktok
It has various free metrics available to track the performance of your content. For example, it has metrics like impressions, likes, shares, follows, comments, etc.
- Youtube
This has various metrics like views, likes, dislike, share, saves, downloads, comments.etc.
5 Highly Recommended Social Media Analytics Tools
It is clear that most of the important metrics and detailed analytics are not provided or available on most social media platforms. To get detailed data that can help you make marketing and content better are provided by social media analytics tools. We would share some of our top tools with their benefits and highlights.
Sprout has you covered for whether you want a deep analysis on a single or multiple platforms at a glance. You can track Instagram growth, measure facebook page impressions, tally up Twitter clicks and evaluate LinkedIn engagement and so much more in one place. It also provides an easy-to-understand report and even creates a customised report tailored to your brand’s KPIs. you also have access to competitors’ activities to improve your brand. This is a paid service.
This is another analytics tool that can help with the publishing and scheduling of posts across different platforms. Their tools offer comprehensive graphs and visuals that break down the numbers by individual platforms. It also affords you insight into your entire customer journey and not just social media metrics. Are you looking for that one platform for all your inbound marketing? Hubspot is a great fit.
This is more than a social media analytic tool. BuzzSumo is a cloud-based platform that helps you discover the best engagement, content and outreach opportunities across social and search. It can also help you discover new keywords, trending stories, customer questions and content success, all while monitoring what’s most important to your brand.
Google Analytics is a platform that collects data from your websites and apps to create reports that provide insights into your business. This is not solely a social media analytic tool but it has one of the best ways to track social media campaigns. Did you know you can access and track your social media campaigns from the platform? This is a free tool and if you have a Gmail account, you already can get started immediately.
This tool helps find the right influencer across all industries. With the rise of influencer marketing, there is a need to make well-informed decisions to get the maximum ROI possible from an influencer marketing campaign.
This platform helps you find out the reach, engagement rate, and likely price tag of any influencer.
In closing, tracking the most important social media and digital metrics helps you create an informed social and digital marketing strategy that gives the best return on investment of time and resources. You can check out Top Digital Marketing Hacks here.
Should you invest in the paid tools, they give a good return for investment as they help you save time, money, and reduce failed campaigns in the long run.
We help professionals and brands set up a comprehensive marketing system that helps our clients attract, engage their desired paying audience and convert potential leads to happy buying clients/customers.
Share with us your experience with any of the social media metrics mentioned above in the comments section below.
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