In this explosive and competitive era of digital marketing, it’s important to stay ahead of the game. One important way brands can do this is by leveraging social media marketing metrics.
Social media marketing metrics refer to indicators that measure the success of your social media marketing efforts. Social media reporting metrics are vital to all in the online marketing landscape, experts and beginners alike. You should know which ones matter the most and how to track them effectively.
Your various goals will determine what metrics you will be keeping an eye on. Each goal will have a metric that can see its efficacy and the efficiency of your related strategies, further measuring social media.
Why Track Social Media Marketing Metrics?
For social media marketers, tracking social media metrics serves to show the value of what you do. The social media success metrics of your marketing ideas reflect and point out any strategies that need adjustment.
With over 3.4 billion social media users who can be targeted online, social media marketing needs to be tracked accurately to make the most of it.
Social media reporting metrics will show how well your strategies are working on achieving your marketing goals. It goes beyond just looking at likes and retweets – the right social media marketing metrics give you a more prominent and precise picture than simple analytics.
From a business standpoint, all the relevant data must be analyzed and acted upon. Social media marketing metrics play a significant role in determining the best social media marketing strategies.
Metrics will keep you aware of the health of your brand’s reputation and online presence.
Determining which metrics you need to monitor can take a great deal of time, but here’s a compiled list of the most important ones.
If you monitor these social media tracking metrics, you will see the progress of your strategies and campaigns more clearly.
Key Social Media Marketing Metrics
Engagement Metrics
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Engagement metrics are the numbers that indicate how people interact with your content. It can show you how well posts are doing and what kind of content speaks to your audience.
There are different aspects of engagement that you should keep an eye on. Your applause rate, for example, is the likes and favorites that your content receives. It is relative to the number of social media followers you have.
If someone likes or favorites your content, it shows that this content means something to them. That’s how you know the content is what your audience wants to see.
(Source: singlegrain.com)
You should also monitor your likes, comments, and shares. These numbers will show you that your content is resonating with your audience. If it’s not, you’ll notice fewer likes and shares.
Keep in mind that the engagement metrics you get from your social media platforms will vary. Instagram has a high engagement compared to Twitter and Facebook.
Mentions are essential as well – if your brand gets mentioned a lot, it will improve your brand awareness and reach. Clicks will also be an excellent way to determine how many people were interested in your content.
Create your content in such a way that you get the desired engagement. For example, images and videos are more likely to get shares than other posts. To create great video content, you can use one of the many interesting video templates available to marketers. This will help you create professional-looking videos without putting in the hours to edit them.
If you want to be tagged or mentioned, use an exciting call to action and encourage your followers to do what you want.
Using in-depth social media analytics is an excellent way to stay informed about your engagement metrics.
To ensure that you are effectively keeping track of your social media marketing campaign, it is highly suggested that you use interactive dashboards. These can give a concise picture of how projects are progressing.
Awareness Metrics
Awareness metrics help you determine just how aware people are of your content. It is measured in impressions and reach, which are often confused with each other.
Impressions show how many times a post appears on a social media user’s timeline or feed. Reach refers to the potential unique viewers that a post could have. For example, this includes your Instagram followers who shared your content and their followers.
Impressions help you learn more about the potential that your content has to be visible on its own. If you want to increase awareness and educate your audience about your brand and service or product, you’ll likely use a combination of engagement and impressions for your goals.
(Source: Coschedule)
If your content has a high reach, the chances that it will go viral are much higher. If you’re a service-based company, you need a high reach to have more chances of welcoming new clients on board.
To determine your reach, add together the accounts that shared your content and their followers.
Brand awareness is another awareness metric that is important to marketers. It’s all about the attention that your brand receives across all social media accounts. You can determine your awareness by looking at your mentions, shares, impressions, and clicks.
One of the best ways to ensure that your awareness metrics are accurate when you calculate them is consistent. Then you’ll be able to better compare results from different times.
Doing a lot of qualitative research about your audience will help you achieve your goals easier and faster.
Conversion Metrics
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When you’re doing a lot of hard work to make your strategies work, one of the most important metrics is conversion. Do your efforts show actual results? Referrals, your click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), and bounce rates are the metrics you should be keeping an eye on.
Referrals are how your online visitors land on your website. You can use web analytic software to find the sources of referrals to your site.
CTRs are about how many people click on your call to action links. This isn’t the same as shares or likes and is about specific links that take your audience to particular places, such as your homepage.
To measure your CTR, determine the total clicks on a post’s link and the impressions of that post. Then, divide the number of clicks you have by the number of impressions. The answer is multiplied by 100 to calculate the CTR percentage of your post.
You must monitor your CPC, so you know just how much you spend on getting clicks on your social media posts. It’s easy to be blinded by your social media advertising campaign’s cost, but the cost per click is one of your most important investments.
Check your social media platform’s Ad Manager often to determine whether your strategy is working.
(Source: Social Media Examiner)
The last, but not least important, conversion metric we suggest you monitor is your bounce rate. With this metric, you can determine how many of your page visitors click on a post link but don’t stick around long enough to take any actions.
This metric also helps you compare your social media traffic’s performance to other sources, such as Google search clicks.
If your bounce rate for your social media content is lower than the rates from your other marketing efforts, find a fresh approach. Google Analytics will give you a good look at your bounce rates.
Tracking the conversions of your affiliate marketing efforts is a bit trickier, but just as important. Fortunately, there are many great tools available, and we recommend that you make use of one.
Share of Voice Metrics
(Source:Ahrefs)
Your share of voice is the share of the market that your brand owns compared to that of your competition. There are two ways to look at it – volume and sentiment.
Volume indicates how much people are discussing your content, brand, or industry on social media. This can include how many times your social media username is tagged or how many times you’re mentioned without a tag. It also includes the times that your brand or products are used in a hashtag.
Sentiment is how people feel about your brand on social media. Their opinions and attitudes are taken into account to get a clear picture of your audience’s sentiment.
Volume shows you the ‘how many’ while sentiment shows the ‘what.’
Measuring your share of voice metrics is key to understanding how your audience feels about your brand and your content. If they’re not impressed or happy, you should know so you can improve your strategies.
Customer support is one way to get information on your share of voice because you’ll find out what people are complaining about. You can also use social listening to stay on top of every mention and discussion involving your brand.
Customer Support Metrics
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To calculate your customer support metrics and gather data, you need to look at your response rate and time.
While you have to keep track of your social media posts and online content’s performance, never forget that you’re dealing with real people. How your brand treats them is vitally important.
You should also use customer feedback to determine how satisfied they are with your customer service team.
(Source: Groove HQ)
Track The Metrics That Matter
There are many metrics that will help you get a good idea of how well your social media marketing strategies are performing. But it is easy to get carried away and try to monitor and absorb too much information.
If you focus on the social media marketing metrics that we’ve discussed here, you’ll have a concise and accurate picture of your performance, helping you transform it into long-term success.