Numbers matter in business, not just regarding the bottom line but also regarding how effective your marketing efforts have been. Like any business expenditure, it is important to track the effectiveness of a marketing campaign to determine whether or not you are targeting the right audience, using the correct language, at their peak hours. One of the key advantages social media marketing has over conventional marketing channels is the ease with which progress/ goals can be tracked. The disadvantage of this is that you can track almost any metric, making it challenging to determine which metrics matter.
The number of metrics you track will largely depend on various factors, such as the size of your budget, your team, and your business objectives. Here are a few important social media success metrics to track in 2022.
AWARENESS METRICS
Awareness metrics are the numbers that represent how many people actually see your content as well as how much attention your brand gets on social media.
Reach: This refers to the number of people who see the content you put up. It’s important to monitor your reach for each post, story, or video.
Another way to measure your reach is to measure what percentage of it is made up of followers vs. non-followers. If the data indicates that many non-followers are viewing your content, that might mean it’s being highly shared, doing well in the algorithms, or both.
Impressions: This refers to the number of times people viewed your content. It can be higher than your reach because sometimes a person might view your content multiple times.
A high level of impressions compared to reach might be an indication that people are viewing the content multiple times. In this case, it would be an excellent idea to investigate further why people are viewing the content multiple times and then create similar content in the future.
Audience growth rate: This refers to the number of new followers your brand attracts on social media within a certain amount of time. This metric doesn’t focus on the number of followers you currently have but instead draws attention to the percentage of your new followers in relation to your total audience. For instance, when you’re just at the start of your journey, attracting 10 or 100 new followers in a month could result in a high growth rate. However, once you have a larger audience, you might need more new followers to maintain the momentum.
To calculate your audience growth rate, keep track of your new net followers (on each platform) over a specific period. Divide that figure by your total audience (on each platform) multiplied by 100.
Audience growth rate= (Net new followers/ total audience) x 100
ENGAGEMENT METRICS
Engagement rate: This measures your content (reactions, comments, and shares) engagement as represented as a percentage of your audience.
You might choose to calculate engagement in relation to your number of followers. However, it would help if you kept in mind that not all your followers will view each post. Additionally, you might get engagement from people who aren’t your followers. In this case, your definition of “audience” is at your discretion.
Average engagement rate= (Total likes, Comments & Shares/ Total Followers) x 100
Amplification rate: This is the ratio of shares per post to the number of overall followers. According to Google’s Avinash Kaushik, the amplification rate is “the rate at which your followers take your content and share it through your networks.”
In other words, the higher the amplification rate, the more your followers are expanding your reach.
Amplification rate = (Total Post Shares/ Total Followers) x 100
Virality rate: This is similar to the amplification rate because it measures the rate at which your content is shared. However, the virality rate calculates the shares as a percentage of impressions rather than as a percentage of followers. The key point to remember here is the fact that whenever someone shares your content on their social media, it achieves a fresh set of impressions via their audience. Therefore virality measures how your content is spreading exponentially.
Virality rate= (Number of Shares/ Number of Impressions) x 100
VIDEO METRICS
Video Views: If part of your content creation involves making videos, you definitely want to know how many people are watching them. Each social media platform has its own definition of the word “view”; however, even just a few seconds of watch time can usually be counted as views. Therefore video views are a great indicator of how many people have at least seen the beginning of your video.
Video Completion Rate: Just like the name indicates, this tracks how many people have watched your video content to the end. This is a great indicator that you are creating quality content that clearly connects with your target audience.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND SERVICE METRICS
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): These are not just about response times and response rates; the CSAT is a metric used to measure people’s rate of happiness with your product or service. Typically, the CSAT score is based on the simple question, “how would you rate your overall level of satisfaction?
This metric is the reason many brands ask you to rate your experience with a customer service representative after you’ve purchased their product or experienced their service.
Customer metrics score= (Sum of the Score/ Number of Respondents) x 100
Net promoter score (NPS): The Net Promoter Score measures customer loyalty. This metric is excellent at predicting future customer relationships- it is based on a simple question; “How likely would you recommend our company/ product/ service to a friend?
Customers are invited to answer the question on a scale of zero to 10. Depending on their response, each customer is grouped into one of these categories;
– Detractors: 0-6 score range
– Passives: 7-8 score range
– Promoters: 9-10 score range
NPS is a valuable metric because it measures both customer satisfaction and potential for future sales.
Net promoter score= {(Promoters- Detractors) / Total Respondents } x 100
ROI METRICS
Click-through rate (CTR): Click-through rate refers to how often people click a link in your post to view more of your content. CTR can help you measure how many people saw your content and wanted access to more information. It’s often a great indicator of how well your social content promotes your offering.
CTR= (Total Clicks/ Total Impressions) x 100
Conversion rate: This measures how often your social content starts the process of conversion, leading customers to subscribe, download or buy. This is one of the most relevant social media marketing metrics because it illustrates the value of social content as a means of feeding your funnel.
Conversion rate percentage= (Conversions/ Total Clicks) x 100
Cost-per-click: This refers to the amount you pay per individual click on a social media ad campaign. Typically, you’d don’t need to calculate CPC yourself; it’s part of the analytics on the social media platform on which you’re running your ad.
Cost-per-click= (Total Ad Spend/ Total Measured Clicks) x 1000
Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM): Cost per thousand impressions or CPM refers to the cost you pay for every thousand impressions of your social media Ads. CPM has more to do with views, not actions. This metric is also drawn from your social network analytic data.
Cost per thousand= (Total Ad Spend/ Total Ad Impressions) x 1000
The importance of tracking social media metrics.
Social media metrics inform you whether your social media strategy is working and show how you can improve. They are also a great way to assess whether the amount of money and effort you are expending is worth it in the long run.
Each social media platform has analytic tools that help you determine and track your social media performance. Despite this, for each platform, you can reasonably track the following and a lot more;
– Clicks
– Comments
– Reach
– Engagement rate
– Impressions
– Shares
– Saves
– Video views
– Video reach
– Follower growth over time
– Negative feedback rate
– Profile visits
– Reactions
– Overall engagement rate
With this short overview, you can easily track and understand the different metrics that will inform you about the success of your social media strategy.