As social media becomes more and more popular for both consumers and businesses alike, businesses need to know how to measure how well they are using social media platforms to reach their audiences. After all, if you don’t know what you are not doing well, how can you improve? This is exactly where social media metrics come in or the picture.
Social media metrics are the data points that you can use to see how well your social media strategy is working. Think of social media metrics like the check-ins or quizzes that students get in their classes to assess how well they are understanding the information and where they need to study more.
You can use the information you gather from these metrics to best determine how to improve your online presence and grow your business.
What Metrics Should You Be Tracking?
The truth is that there are tons of different metrics that you could be tracking because there are so many different ways to measure how well (or not well) you are doing in the social sphere. But, narrowing down your metrics to measure a few categories of success can make the process of tracking your progress and goals much easier.
Here, we will talk about 6 extremely important social media metric categories as well as which specific metrics should be tracked in each one.
Engagement
The first category of metrics is engagement. Essentially these metrics show you how effective your brand campaigns are and how involved your customers are with your content.
Metrics to track:
Individual engagement — the number of likes, comments, shares, etc. your content gets.
Post engagement rate — individual engagement divided by impressions or reach.
Account mentions — organic mentions like tagging in a story or mentions that are not part of a reply.
Awareness
Tracking awareness shows you how much attention your brand is getting on social media.
Metrics to track:
Impressions — the number of times people see your content.
Reach — the number of people who see your content.
Audience growth rate — how many new followers you get in a certain time period.
Customer Experience
No business can survive without customers, but customers are not dependent on any single business for their needs — especially in today’s world of easy to access similar products and services from a myriad of different companies. For this reason, providing an excellent customer experience for all of your customers should be at the forefront of your business’s priorities. These metrics help you assess how successful you are in creating that pleasant experience.
Metrics to track:
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) — how happy your customers are with your products or services.
Net promoter score (NPS) — how loyal your customers are.
Video
Many people may not include video metrics in their list of the most important metrics to track, but as video content becomes more and more important for engaging customers, knowing how well your video content is performing is essential.
Metrics to track:
Views — how many people have seen at least the beginning of your video content.
Completion rate — how often people watch your videos from start to finish.
ROI
ROI (or return on investment) metrics show you what you are getting in return for your effort and resources. Put differently, how are the resources you are putting into your social media advertising paying off for your business?
Metrics to track:
Click-through rate (CTR) — how often people click links in your post to view additional content.
Conversion rate — how often your content starts the process of a sale, download, or subscription.
Cost-per-click (CPC) — how much you pay for each click on an advertisement.
Share of Voice
The final category of social media metrics that you should be tracking is share of voice. This group of metrics shows you which part and how much of the online market your brand is taking part in. In other words, how you are performing in comparison to your competitors.
Metrics to track:
Social share of voice (SSoV) — the number of people who are talking about your brand on social media.
Social sentiment — what types of things people are saying about your brand, are they positive or negative things?
Why Is Tracking These Metrics Important?
As we touched on above, these metrics show you the real-life data that tells you whether or not your current strategies are working. By figuring out which areas are performing well you can figure out where you should focus your efforts on improving to get more in return for the resources you are expending.
Social media metrics help you understand what is going on in the social sphere and where your business stands in that sphere. Without them, you would have no way of knowing where your business stands in comparison to your competition and you would not be able to make any form of informed strategy to improve that standing.
We understand that tracking all of these metrics and using them to inform improvements to your social media strategy can be incredibly intimidating. That is why our dedicated team at APS Central can handle this for you. We keep up with the latest technologies, platforms, and trends so that you can better engage with your customers without having to spend all of your time researching.
So, if you are wanting to improve your social media presence but don’t know where to start or how to step it up, contact us at APS Central today to see how we can help out!
