Social Analytics Guide: Metrics to Measure Social Media Success

Social media has come a long way from being used solely for building online connections. Today, you can even harness data from these platforms it to drive more online growth – so long as you know the exact metrics to measure social media success, that is.

Because in today’s modern practice of marketing in social spaces – be you a social media marketing agency or a business owner – requires a talent for reading data. You need to know how to measure social media marketing peformance, develop actionable insights from the data, and, in turn, craft strategies so you can build upon what your brand has already achieved.

Even the lack of understanding of metrics to measure social media success alone can cripple your strategies.

Data in social media marketing

Because face it: Data is and should be at the core of anything you do in online spaces, most especially on social media platforms.

Unpredictable as the landscape is – with its their changing algorithms and dynamic audiences – data helps you identify patterns and put you on the clearest path to success.

For one, data on your audience’s online behavior helps you map out a strategy and customer journey that brings you conversions. You can also harness the power of data to improve your social media copies. And, ultimately, use drive social media conversions with the help of your analytics.

RELATED READING: How to Reach Your Audiences Better With Data Analytics

But for all its benefits, data on social media with a critical weakness. It’s that sadly, your data can only serve you as well as how accurately interpret it.

Think about it this way: Even Hansel and Gretel ended up in the witch’s hut because they thought the trail of breadcrumbs led to the path to safety. They read the data the wrong way – or perhaps they were looking at the wrong data, in the first place – and so came up with a strategy that led to failure.

How do you avoid this? Simple: Know what metrics exactly mean and which metrics you need to measure your social media performance. So let’s talk about goal-seting and goal-metrics matching.

Goal-setting and goal-metrics matching

Setting your goals is vital in creating an effective social media strategy. Goals are the basis of your social media marketing blueprint, and should therefore always be measured by the appropriate metrics.

Setting your goals

The first step in answering the question, “How will you measure your social networking success?”, is to find out what you want to achieve. Setting your goals can help you plan specific objectives, the results you want to see, and how you can gauge the effeciveness of your efforts.

Matching metrics with your goals

Gauging the effectiveness of your efforts is naturally where your metrics come in; without the proper mach, you can’t make the proper assessment. So along with each goal, identify a corresponding metric and outline your key performance indicators (KPIs).

These are the best data points that clue you into whether or not your efforts are working.

Social media metrics and what they point to

You can find out which metrics signal the achievement of specific social media marketing goals, below. Let this you accordingly when you strategize, so you can proceed correctly and accurately.

Social Media Awareness Metrics

• Estimated Ad Recall Lift
• Impressions
• Reach

Social Media Engagement Metrics

• Post Engagement Rate
• Page Engagement Rate
• Interactions
• Followers Count

Social Media Metrics for Leads

• PPC Ad Click-through Rate
• Landing Page Click-through Rate

Social Media Conversion Metrics

• Downloads or Installs
• Registrations
• Referrals
• ROIs

Social Media Awareness Metrics

This KPI is one of the most essential metrics for it can increase ROI. For some digital marketers though, it may seem unnecessary to measure brand awareness while others may avoid it because it can be difficult to measure. 

Estimated Ad Recall Lift

These metrics refer to your customer’s ability to recall anything connected to your brand. A catchy tagline, logo, and an interesting ad story may help prospective customers notice and remember your product or service more.

This is why part of any social media agency’s expert advice these days is to make highly-emotional content, or highlight viral issues in their ads. Of course, adding a famous celebrity or trending social media influencer to the plan is also essential.

But how do you choose the most relevant influencer for your brand? Read our guide on choosing the right influencer. 

Impressions

Impressions are the total number of times that your business’s post has appeared on a user’s timeline, or how many times people have viewed the said post. Impressions are vital metrics to measure social media success since they help provide insights on the specific demographics of your followers who can turn into potential clients or customers.

Using popular social media hashtags on different platforms can help add more impressions for your posts. Remember to research hashtags for each social media platform though, because one hashtag might not necessarily be trending on the other. 

If you’re not sure which social media platform to focus on for your campaign, check out this guide on how to choose the best social media to drive traffic. 

Reach

Reach is connected to your impressions. It refers to the number of people who saw your page or profile, and content. These people are responsible for the number of your page or profile views, and your post impressions. 

These people are critical to your marketing success since their activities can help give you insights on what kind of content you can better provide them. Doing so results in better engagement and brand promotion. 

Social Media Engagement Metrics

The next set of metrics to measure social media success focuses on engagement. Engagement helps you identify who exactly shared your content and which contents had the most number of likes, shares, retweets, comments, and other online interactions. 

Post Engagement Rate

How do you measure social media success? Take a look at the post engagement rate, or the number of people who engage with a post divided by the number of total reach or impressions. A post with a high engagement rate suggests that the post captured your target audience’s attention. 

Asking questions or polls in social media can be a good way to increase post engagement, as well as posting memes, videos, or other content that mentions trending topics. 

To better find out the best content to provide for your users, social listening and monitoring can help.

ADDITIONAL READING: Social Listening vs Social Monitoring: How to Use Both for Content Planning.

Page Engagement Rate

This refers to the number of profile visits, website clicks, number of stories created, and promotions that your brand has had for the entire week. Other metrics to look into are the gender, age range, and top locations of your followers. Some social media platforms let marketers select a time frame to view page engagements in a particular period. 

Making meaningful posts can help in raising organic news feed visibility, so carefully plan out interesting and engaging posts that are relevant to your followers. Highly emotional posts are one of the surefire ways to garner more engagement, so check out our helpful guide about ways to inject emotional resonance in your online content.

Interactions

Interactions are the responses that a social media post gets. It is one way to get to know your customers more, and also to find out more on how you can improve your products and services. Take note of the following significant interactions:

• Shares – the number of times your post was shared
• Comments – a user’s feedback on a particular post
• Reactions – a reaction to a specific post from your follower
• Video Views – the number of times people watched your video
• Post Clicks – the number of times users clicked a post
• Link Clicks – the number of times users clicked a post

Interactions tell you a lot about what contents best work for your audience in each social media platform, which makes it one of the vital metrics to measure social media success. Use this data to plan an effective social media marketing strategy in the long haul. 

Followers Count

The followers count is the number of followers that you acquire at a certain period. Your followers show significant data that you can use for your social media campaigns which is why any social media agency highly considers these numbers. Check out the following elements involved in checking your follower data:

• Total followers – the total number of followers that your page has since its account creation
• New followers – the number of new users who followed your page in a certain period
• Demographics – demographics of your followers will let you identify the social media content and platforms that are most suitable for your brand

The demographics include vital aspects such as age, gender, and location (local or international) which can help you in picking content for your social media. 

• Gender – lets you deliver gender-specific content
• Age – lets you make age-specific content
• Location (local) – lets you choose content that is specific for suburban, rural, or urban areas in the local community
• Location (international) – lets you choose content that is specific for a particular country

Social Media Metrics for Leads

Lead generation is one of the key metrics in social media marketing. This data captures the consumers’ interest in a particular product or service to develop a sales pipeline. This key process involves data collection for salespersons to contact and generate leads for your brand. 

PPC Ad Click-through Rate

If you are wondering how will you measure your social networking success, measuring your click-through rate (CTR) should be part of your marketing analytics. CTRs show the number of times people click to an ad after they saw it.

Use CTR data to determine the relevant and best keywords to use for your ads, and also use these data to find out your ads’ performance. The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions is a way to get the CTR.

To run a successful PPC campaign, you will need a high click-through rate. This is because your CTR will affect your quality score and how much you will pay when someone clicks the search ad.

ALSO READ: PPC Management Process Guide for Ads That Actually Convert

Landing Page Click-through rate

Any social media agency knows that a landing page is a powerful tool in marketing campaigns. A landing page is a pre-sell page, and the people who arrived on this page after seeing you all will click through the target page. 

A high CTR means there is a high percentage of people who clicked your ad. A lower CTR means the ad is irrelevant; thus, lower chances of getting leads.

When the CTR scores better, it also means the ad has higher chances of being shown by Bing and Google as a part of the metrics in Google Analytics, which also translates to less advertising expenses.

Social Media Conversion Metrics

These metrics usually follow after generating leads, converting the site visitors to leads, and eventually turning leads to customers. This includes the conversion rate, which refers to the number of visitors who took action on a page after clicking a link in your post. 

Downloads or Installs

Downloads or app installation rates increase when someone visits your site and installs or downloads something from that site on that same day. It is a challenge to have your customers download or install your apps or contents like e-books or whitepapers though, as there are lots of contents and apps out there.

Want to increase your downloads for your apps? Learn more about the 12 mobile app development best practices every developer must know. 

11. Registrations

Registration conversion rates can increase by giving your customers enticing and useful offers that are different from what your competitors are providing. Don’t settle with free consultations or common freebies. Give them something that is relevant to them and they can actually use, so that they will keep coming back for more.

Referrals

If you ask experts, “How do you measure social media success?” they will answer that referrals should also be part of your metrics. Referrals are the ways a user lands on your site. In the analytics by Google, they are categorized as sources or networks that recommended your site or page to users. The traffic for referrals are strong indicators to identify the external sources that are most valuable to your business.

Finding the right audience with the right content can help increase referral rates. Read more about how to find the ideal audience for your content in 5 easy steps.

Return of Investment (ROI)

To get a high return on investment for your marketing campaigns, you must calculate your social media campaign. Next, identify how much are the actual expenses based on the type of campaign you’re running. Lastly, what is the impact of said amount in your business profits? You can then identify through these metrics the performance of your campaign’s profitability.

The conversion rate is one of the metrics in marketing that is essential when creating a sales funnel starting from lead generation to conversion. You can get the conversion rate by following this formula:

Conversion Rate = (Conversions ÷ Total Visitors) × 100%

You may also look into conversion rate optimization, cost per acquisition, and ecommerce tracking, which are a part of the conversion metrics.

Key Takeaways

Social media analytics and metrics play an important role in social media marketing performance. But to fully use them in campaigns, social media marketers must remember a few things.

• Setting goals is the essential first step for a social media marketing campaign. Match it with the right metrics and you are one step closer to achieving your marketing campaigns. 
• Trending topics can be specific for each social media platform. For example, what might be trending on Twitter may not exactly be trending on Instagram or TikTok.
• Planning out your content for social media is always important. With interesting content, you can successfully earn brand awareness and engagement among existing and potential customers. 

Still at a loss on how to understand and pick the right metrics? Our social media agency team is very much willing to help you! Leave us a message on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and we’ll assist you.