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Social Media Metrics to Keep Track Of

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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.

Top 10 reasons why you should invest in social media

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The jury’s still out on whether social media is really worth the hype. Some can’t live without it and consider it a must-have for any business, while others believe in a more traditional approach and approach marketing from a more “organic” point of view. Regardless of which camp you fall into, social media is a big part of our everyday lives and, from the looks of it, is here to stay. With that in mind, it might be better to embrace it and enjoy the numerous advantages like the ones listed below.

 

Client engagement

 

One of the highest benefits of using social media is increased engagement with clients. The more you post interesting content, new products or services, offers, and other information, the more people within your target audience will engage with your brand. With consistency in the quality and frequency of your posts, you can build an audience that will readily offer feedback and recommendations. Social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and others can help you grow a community of loyal customers- a necessity for any business to succeed.

 

Better customer service

 

Unlike in the past where companies had to carry out expensive surveys anytime they needed to gauge the market and learn about their customers, social media enables you to communicate with your customers in real-time and at a much lower cost. Companies can create free online surveys, run polls, or even simply ask customers to comment directly about a product or service, thereby allowing them to serve the needs of their customers more efficiently. Customers can take to their favourite brands’ pages and comment, like, or even complain, which has raised the bar for most companies’ ability to quickly serve and solve their customers’ problems or queries.

 

Drive traffic to your website

 

Social media is perhaps the best and most effective awareness tool currently available to businesses. Using offers and promotions and engaging content, you can drive your target audience directly to your website, where you can then up-sale or drive conversion. When used as a channel to create awareness and drive traffic, social media is a highly effective tool, especially since the average person spends more time scrolling through their phone than they do watching TV or reading newspapers.

 

Boost your SEO

 

A major benefit of social media is that it can be a great help in boosting your search engine optimisation. Social media platforms can work as a signal to a search engine like Google that your business is legitimate and, therefore, safe for your target audience to purchase from. When using social media in this way, it’s imperative that you include a link to your website so that customers have a place they can go to get more information or even buy more products or services.

 

Build loyalty

 

Customers who follow your social media pages are more likely to trust you and be loyal when you post and engage with them regularly. By sharing relevant information, tips, and other interesting content related to your brand or industry, your target audience will come to recognise you as an authority on the subject and therefore be more willing to spend their money on your brand products or service.

 

Increase awareness

 

Raising awareness for your brand, cause, or product is another great benefit of using social media. Having a strong social media presence will create an ever-increasing wave of attention for your brand. Social media has a great multiplier effect, making it the perfect avenue for you to grow your audience and draw awareness to new product or service offerings, an important cause, or any important information you would like to pass on to your target.

 

Advertise your business

 

Social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook give both small and large businesses and entrepreneurs the opportunity to advertise to highly targeted audiences. With social media, you can create adverts for different demographics and speak to your target audience in a language they will readily understand, thereby increasing the likelihood of generating high sales.

 

Learn about your target audience

 

Social media platforms collect and store large amounts of data about all the users, which information is then later sold to businesses to aid in crafting compelling marketing content. Social media can allow you to know what places your target audience frequents, the music they love, social status and income level, education level, and others. Armed with this information, you can create targeted advertisements that speak to the heart of your target audience’s pain points.

 

Learn about your competitors

 

Not only does social media let you learn about your target audience, but you also get to learn about your competitors; what type of content they post, how many followers they have, what level of engagement they have with the market, marketing tactics they employ and other details that can help you keep up with them.

 

Share website content

 

Social media creates the opportunity for you to share your website content on other platforms, which generates awareness and possibly sales. With the millions of websites online, it would be challenging to stand out or get people to visit your website, especially if it’s new, but with social media, you can generate the needed buzz to get people interested in your content without too much effort.

 

There are still many out there who don’t believe that social media is worth the investment; nonetheless, the online world continues to spin with ever more innovations added to each platform. As a savvy entrepreneur, your job is to stay on top of all the latest innovations, leverage the opportunities and grow your brand.

Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing in Business

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Social media marketing refers to marketing activity carried out on social media platforms. Social media marketing involves creating and publishing content on your business’s social media pages to raise awareness, drive sales, engage your target audience, generate conversion, or even simply build a dedicated community for your business.

 

Marketing products or services on social media involves optimisation through various tools that allow companies to promote their content and have their customers engage with it in real-time. The biggest social media platforms like Meta, Instagram, Twitter, Tic Toc, LinkedIn, and others have made it easy for businesses to engage directly with their customers and target audiences. Most social media platforms also have built-in data analytic tools to help them track their engagements and success.

 

The advent of social media changed the marketing rules and allowed even the smallest industry players to go toe-to-toe with the more prominent brands. However, like everything else, there is a positive and a negative side. Let’s dive into the pros of social media marketing in business.

 

Reach a larger audience

 

Social media marketing has been heaven-sent for small businesses that don’t have the luxury of opening branches across the globe. Social media has no constraints- as long an individual can access the internet and has an account on the platform, your business can reach them. From Brazil to Bostwana, S.Korea to Denmark, social media reaches across the globe, giving a brand a virtually unlimited potential to target its ideal customer.

 

Direct connection to customers

 

Social media places the agency in the hands of customers and allows them to choose whether or not they want to interact with a brand and the content it publishes. This essentially means that every single follow, like, or retweet is a vote of confidence in what your brand is doing. With social media marketing, you can test product or service offerings in real-time and get feedback from your target audience. You can also engage with customers in ways conventional marketing channels would never allow.

 

By engaging and relating with your customer, your business is given the opportunity to get to know their tastes and preferences and thereby create personalised content or product offerings.

 

Build brand loyalty

 

The modern customer wants to support a brand that shares their values, speaks to them like a long-lost friend, and, most importantly, a brand that eventually becomes a part of their identity. The more you interact with customers via social media and the more you create content that speaks to your brand truth, the more likely you are to raise brand awareness and brand loyalty. In this regard, consistency is king and will build trust in the marketplace.

 

Monitor customer feedback

 

Social media provides the quickest way to get customer feedback on a product or service. With social media marketing, you gain real-time information about whether a particular campaign is achieving the goals set. For example, suppose you were to run an awareness campaign on your Facebook page. In that case, you’d instantly know whether or not the campaign is successful simply based on the amount of engagement the campaign has registered. In addition, you could access data collected and analyzed by the app to aid in deciding whether to keep running the campaign or stop.

 

Get access to many growth opportunities

 

Whether small or large, a business of any size benefits greatly from marketing on social media. With wider market reach, lower advertising costs, and real-time feedback, social media marketing presents a unique opportunity for a business to grow quickly.

 

Grow your business at a faster rate

 

Social media has a higher lead-to-close rate than traditional forms of marketing and advertising. Due to the personalized content and direct communication between brands and customers, the journey down the sales funnel is made at a faster rate than through conventional marketing channels. This is highly beneficial because it results in more conversions and, ultimately, higher profits.

 

Access to paid advertising

 

Social media marketing allows businesses to reach a larger audience for more significant returns. A business can tailor its advertising to suit different audience demographics through social media, leading to higher profits. Different social media platforms provide different options to engage in paid campaigns.

 

Social media marketing for business presents many advantages but also comes with many disadvantages, as seen below.

 

Time- consuming

 

Social media marketing can be very time-consuming and challenging for businesses- especially small brands that cannot afford to hire a dedicated team of social media managers. Although social media is free, crafting new content that can captivate the audience can also pose a problem for businesses. For a company to maintain an active social media page, a lot of effort is spent writing posts, creating graphics, and engaging members of the target audience- all of which must be done on a consistent basis.

 

Negative publicity hurts

 

The saying ‘all press is good press doesn’t hold true in the world of social media marketing. Customers in today’s digital world wield great power over brands and are not afraid to use it. Social media is rife with stories of brands that misfired by endorsing controversial celebrities, posted content considered racist, or failed to show empathy at a key moment and not only received backlash from the general online community but also eventually lost a lot of business. Brands must walk the social media minefield carefully and be conscious not to say or support anything their target audience might deem offensive. This can be exhausting and feel like a restraint on the business, but it’s the current reality, and brands are expected to abide by the new rules.

 

Manifestations of wins take a long time

 

Although social media enables quick engagement with your target audience, it takes a while for a business to accrue positive results from its consistent marketing effort. You may often have to engage in social media marketing for a long time before a noticeable increase in engagement or return on investment is realised, which can be pretty disheartening for some entrepreneurs. Despite this, successful social media marketing requires consistency and dedication; therefore, any business owner must be prepared to pay the price of time and commitment before seeing any meaningful results.

 

Loss of control

 

Think of social media as an online marketplace where the usual rules don’t apply. A disgruntled former employee, competitor, or even a dissatisfied customer can spread a false report about your business, causing you to lose followers and support or, worst case, causing people to actively band against your brand. Once a rumour spreads on social media, it can be difficult for a brand to get ahead of it.

 

Dilutes brand voice

 

For brands with more than one social media manager handling their accounts, there is the risk of diluting the brand voice with different parties posting in a seemingly different language. This can cause confusion in the marketplace and, in the worst case, leave the brand without a distinctive “voice” that differentiates it from its competitors.

 

Social media marketing is here to stay, and a strong social media presence is mandatory for any business to be taken seriously. Depending on how the different platforms are utilised, a brand could either be rewarded with increased engagement and sales or shunned. For this reason, social media marketing should be taken seriously and handled with professionalism, insights, and consistency.