Basic Social Media Metrics That You Should Track

What are social media metrics and why should you track them?

Numbers are the universal language, especially for accountants marketers.

Social media has become an integral part of every marketing strategy, but the real question here is – Are your social media efforts paying off? Great marketing requires good data, from follower counts to brand awareness score, the world of social media metrics has never been more perplexing.

While social media metrics are important, figuring out which metrics truly matter for your brand is equally important too. Tracking the right metrics is one of the key connectors between your social media activities and your brand’s goals and business objectives. 

To make things easier for you, we’ll go over the 5 basic social media metrics that you should track to ensure that your social media marketing strategies are effective. Let’s jump right in!

Engagement Metrics: Likes/Reactions, Comments, Shares and Clicks

Engagement rate is one of the most common metrics that are used to track how actively involved your audiences are with your content. Audiences engage with brands through different interactions on different platforms, some of the key interactions are, Likes/Reactions, Comments, Social Sharing, and Clicks. High engagement rates tend to indicate how responsive your audience is, which are often interlinked with how interested your audiences are with your content and whether they are able to resonate with your brand. 

While a post which receives a lot of likes may be considered as a well-received content, if the purpose and goal of the post is to encourage comments and interactions, then the number of likes will not be the key metrics that will determine the performance of the post. It is important to understand that oftentimes, looking at a single engagement metric may not provide you with the context to make reliable decisions hence it’s important to always look at the bigger picture and understand the post intention before determining which metrics to focus on.  

By sorting these out, it will be easier for you to identify the engagement trend which will make it easier for you to analyse and optimise your social strategy accordingly.

Awareness Metrics: Impressions & Reach

As the name suggests, brand awareness simply refers to the attention that your brand is getting on social media. So, if your goal is to boost brand awareness, you certainly should be tracking both the brand’s impressions and reach. Reach refers to the number of unique users who have seen your content, indicating how viral your content has gone online. Impressions, on the other hand, represent the number of times your content has shown up on a user’s timeline.

These are the numbers which show how many people see your content and how much attention your brand is getting on social media. Impressions and reach are the numbers which are also closely related to how well your social media engagement is performing. When your impressions and reach are low, it’ll often result in a lower engagement rate simply because your posts are being viewed by fewer people. 

Impressions are key metrics which also helps you determine how effective your posts are. If your content has a high reach and impressions, but a relatively low engagement or conversions & clicks, this may mean that your content may not be interesting enough or your content may have been reaching the wrong target audience.

Social Share of Voice & Social Sentiment 

Social share of voice is a metric which is often used in public relations, competitive analysis and advertising campaigns. It measures how many people are talking about your brand compared to your competitors or in other words, how visible and relevant your brand is in the industry

Social sentiment is another metric which is closely related to social share of voice, it tracks the feelings and attitudes behind the conversation, to help you have a better understanding of what are some of the keywords and topics which are most often associated with your brand while giving you an insight of whether the public views your brand negatively or positively. 

Improving your social share of voice and social sentiment should always be one of the brand’s ongoing goals. While campaigns come and go, your brand is forever. Social voice and sentiments can be tracked through several different methods such as calculating your brand mentions, branded hashtags or through reviews platforms such as Google Reviews or Tripadvisor. By tracking the results, overtime you will be able to identify the factors for those changes and thus, implement necessary changes to help improve your brand’s online image and reputation. 

ROI Metrics: Click-Through-Rate, Conversion Rate, Cost Per Click

One of the most common goals of brand jumping on social media marketing is because they want more people to convert into their customers. Conversions metrics is one of the most important social media marketing metrics which shouldn’t be overlooked because it shows the value of your social content while also being closely tied to both your sales and marketing goals, and ultimately business goals. 

Different industries use different benchmarks and indicators hence, it’s important for the brand to always research the applicable metrics beforehand. Some of the common examples include:

• Clicks on Call-To-Action buttons
• Landing pages views
• Cost per click / Cost per conversion
• Leads generated 
• Time on site
• Form completions rate

And… That’s a wrap for now!

Hopefully with this article, you will have a better understanding of the data in the Marketing world and don’t forget to share with us @plexxiesg which of these social metrics do you consider key to your marketing strategy!