Metrics That Matter
5 Social Media Metrics You Need to be Keeping an Eye Out For
Social media has become one of the most powerful and influential tools of marketing in the past decade. With how prevalent, accelerated, and multifunctional it can be, it is no surprise that it has become the most preferred tool of digital marketers, to reach out to their audience.
With that being said, your campaign doesn’t just end when you click on that upload button. The real process starts after your posts go live.
Similar to traditional media, marketing campaigns on social media platforms need to be measured too. It’s crucial to know whether your investment in the campaign was worthwhile and prompting conversions. Marketing campaigns backed by meaningful metrics and analytics depict a more credible and trustworthy brand image to investors and customers alike. It conveys the message that the activities and strategies you’ve adopted are effective and meeting your brand’s goals. Among the dozens of different social media metrics that could be conducted, here are some of the most crucial metrics to keep an eye out for, to measure the success of your campaign.
1. Engagement
Engagement is what every brand yearns for from its audience. These are your posts’ likes, comments, mentions, tweets, shares, and replies. So, yes, followers are important, but ultimately it’s engagement and interaction that truly matters. It means your users are actually pausing to interact with your content, and not just mindlessly scrolling past. Meaningful conversations and relationships with your target audience and followers are what boost your customers’ trust and loyalty in your brand,With dozens of branded posts and ads a user views in a day, it’s crucial that your content is strategically crafted to prompt users to engage, and not carry on in their loop of scrolling.
“
Based on your audience and your product/service, you
need to design posts using the right language, tone, and graphics
that would stimulate viewers to take part in the conversation
need to design posts using the right language, tone, and graphics
that would stimulate viewers to take part in the conversation
“
2. Reach
Reach refers to the number of unique viewers your post has. Essentially, it is the number of users your post was exposed to and have actually seen your ad. Calculating your social media reach, over time, allows you to understand and track your audience growth and awareness. Using more well-frequented hashtags and posting at the right time of the day can help you boost your social media reach and recognition.
3.Impression
Your post’s impression is the number of times your piece of content was displayed to people. It simply indicates how many times your post was delivered to someone’s feed. It does not count any kind of interaction, or even if the post was viewed by your audience. So how does it help? Well, social media metrics mean nothing if you look at them individually; to get a full perspective of how your brand is faring, you need to look at them together. A great way to find out if your posts are stimulating or not, is to compare impressions and engagements. A high impressions rate but low engagement would indicate that your content is just not invigorating enough to drive your followers to action. In that case, you might want to think of taking on a different approach or changing your social media strategy.
4. Click-through rate
Another measure that tells you of the effectiveness or strength of your content is your click-through rate, which is the ratio of users who’ve clicked your links to the total number of users who have viewed your links. Links inserted on Facebook text posts, Instagram stories, bios or clickable features on sponsored posts can give you a click-through rate, which would provide information about your content’s views as compared to its clicks. This is some critical information! If the number of viewers who click your links is significantly lower than the total number of viewers, your post which includes links, might just not be motivating enough to call them to action. A low click-through rate indicates, it’s probably time you switch up your strategy and take on a new perspective when it comes to creating your social media posts.