Key Social Media Metrics to Track
All the numbers and graphs in your analytics can be incredibly overwhelming when it comes to social media marketing. Metrics are everything – but which ones do you even pay attention to? How can they help you understand where your brand has been and where it’s going? We’ll cover it all and more in this blog post.
What are social media metrics?
Metrics, in the way they’re defined for social media marketing and strategy, are various types of data points that can help know how well you’re doing in terms of getting your content out there to the intended audience.
Different metrics can fall into different categories of things you should be tracking overall, like reach, engagement, and ROI (return on investment). Breaking these metrics into these “umbrella categories'' might be helpful to understand why exactly you should be keeping an eye on these metrics.
Reach
Reach simply refers to the number of people who see your content, whether that be your brand’s collective account on a certain platform or a specific post or video. There are several metrics you can look at to measure your reach.
Followers vs. Non-followers
A good way to measure your brand’s reach is to compare your followers vs. your non-followers. If lots of non-followers are seeing your content in addition to your followers, then that means your reach is very high. Your content is either doing well in the algorithm and being served to people who don’t follow you, or the content is being shared directly with non-followers.
Shares
Another important facet of understanding your brand’s reach is knowing who’s sharing your posts and where they’re being shared to. Shares are an organic form of reach and engagement that’s generated by your audience. Shares can also expand your reach to non-followers or people otherwise outside of your audience via a direct share from a follower to a non-follower or via shares to a different social media platform.
Engagement
Engagement numbers are probably what you think of first and might rush to worry about when it comes to social media metrics. Many social media platforms encourage keeping your engagement numbers up, but that’s truthfully more for their benefit than your brand’s.
Regardless, you should still keep an eye on your engagement metrics for algorithmic reasons. Platforms like Instagram easily make these metrics available for you to view with the creation of a business profile.
Saves
It’s recently been reported that the Instagram algorithm has shifted to favor posts that have a high number of saves rather than likes. While it’s yet to be known if this is for certain or not, saves are an important engagement metric to keep an eye on, as when someone saves your post, it usually means they’re intending to come back to it for reference or inspiration purposes. With other social media platforms having a similar “bookmarking” feature, saves might be the hidden metric that will allow your brand to grow to its full potential.
Tags and Mentions
Tags and mentions of your brand might be a little harder to track – most social media platforms only notify you once when you’ve been tagged – but they’re a huge indication of how your brand is doing. When people tag or mention your brand, they’re spreading the word that you exist to their follower base – which also expands your reach. A person going out of their way to tag or mention your brand is a chance for meaningful engagement, as you can respond to them, and on platforms like Instagram, you can repost the story or post in which you were mentioned.
ROI
ROI (return on investment) metrics are important if your brand is involved in sales or e-commerce or otherwise has its own website associated with it. To track ROI metrics, you’ll need to use a website traffic analytics site like Google Analytics and a website publishing strategy that incorporates UTM tracking. Some e-commerce sites like Shopify have the analytics you need built-in, so be sure to check.
Referrals
Referrals track how someone found your site: either through directly typing in the URL, through social media, or another source. It’s important to track referrals to see where your audience is mostly coming from, so you can continue to ramp up your social media strategy on that platform.
Conversions
Conversions refer to when someone purchases or downloads something from your site or subLscribes to you. A successful conversion means that your social media marketing strategy has not only driven someone to your site but has convinced them to invest in your brand whether that be monetarily or in their time. It’s important to track when successful conversions happen so you can see if they were tied to a social media campaign or sale.
Track metrics with Power Move Marketing
Need help understanding or tracking your brand’s social media metrics? Visit Power Move Marketing to request a quote today, or check out our services to see where we can help your brand grow.
Author: Louise Irpino