If you’re reading this, you’ve got active social media accounts. If you’re managing it yourself, it costs you time and effort or maybe you’re paying a team to manage your social media profiles. Either way, you should be able to measure the impact your Facebook or Instagram campaign has on your audience. We’re talking about tracking social media metrics. Let’s find out more.
💡 Are you looking for Coworking space in Gurgaon, Noida or Delhi? We are just a call away.
Call Now: 08999 828282
What are social media metrics?
Social media metrics refer to data that tells you how your social media content is performing. Broadly speaking, you can categorize them as awareness metrics, reach metrics, engagement metrics and conversion metrics.
Tracking social media metrics gives you a better understanding of how audiences connect with your content. By seeing how many people read your posts, click on them, comment and share, you can understand what’s working and what isn’t.
Social media metrics also make it easier to manage your reputation. For example, your brand mentions may help weed out fake reviews. Similarly, engagement metrics indicate how customers feel about your brand and products.
Keeping their significance in mind, measuring social media metrics should be seen as a necessity, not an option.
There are countless ways to analyze your social media campaigns. Tracking all could get confusing. Instead, here are the top 12 social media metrics you should look into.
12 Key Social Media Metrics All Business Marketers Should Know
- Brand mentions
- Impressions
- Click Through Rate (CTR)
- Conversion rate
- Engagement rate
- Customer response rate
- Cost per Click (CPC)
- Post reach
- Share of voice
- Audience growth rate
- Bounce rate
- Audience sentiment
1. Brand mentions
Let’s begin with the simplest metric. Brand mentions include all online references of your brand name and products/services. This may be on a blog post, a social media call-out, a review, etc.
Brand mentions are directly linked to your brand reputation. Hence, you must track them regularly. Positive brand mentions are great for word-of-mouth publicity. On the other hand, negative brand mentions must be responded to quickly to limit their impact.
2. Impressions
Impressions are post-level social media metrics. This assesses how many times a person sees your post. It’s a good indicator of your post’s popularity. This metric is usually provided by the social media platform.
3. Click Through Rate (CTR)
1000 people clicked on your last Instagram reel! It sounds impressive, doesn’t it? But, now consider the fact that 1,00,000 people read your post. Is it still as impressive?
CTR measures the percentage of readers who click on links in social media posts. This can be calculated with a simple formula:
CTR= total number of clicks on a post/ total impressions x 100.
So, your CTR would be 1000/100000×100 which is 1%. It’s still quite good. The CTR for link clicks on Instagram advertising ranges from 0.95% to 1.90%.
Also Read: Top Pros and Cons of Adding Your Coworkers on Social Media
4. Conversion rate
CTR measures how many people click on a link to get to your website or a landing page. Tracking conversion rates goes a step further. It indicates how many people took action after getting to the link destination. This could be in the form of getting people to sign up for a newsletter, make a purchase, download an app, etc.
Conversion rate = total number of conversions/ total clicks x 100
Let’s say your reel led to 20 new sign-ups.
This makes your conversion rate 20/1000×100 = 2%
Don’t be disheartened. Conversion rates between 2-5% are considered successful. Anything above 5% is exceptional.
5. Engagement rate
Tracking engagement metrics helps you understand audience interests. It could also show you how many of your followers are ‘real’. Fake followers aren’t likely to engage with posts. These metrics vary across platforms. For Facebook and Instagram, engagement comes in the form of likes, mentions, comments and shares. For X (Twitter), it’s in the form of retweets and replies.
Posts with high engagement metrics are always better. This proves that your audience is interested in what you have to say. Calculate your engagement rate with this formula.
Engagement rate = Number of engagement actions / Number of followers x 100.
Let’s say you have 2,00,000 followers and 200 people liked a post.
Your engagement rate = 200/2,00,000 x 100 = 0.1%.
Ideally, your engagement rate should be higher than 1%. Anything above 3.5% is considered good.
💡 Are you looking for Coworking space in Gurgaon, Noida or Delhi? We are just a call away.
Call Now: 08999 828282
6. Customer response rate
This is an important metric for customer service departments. 90% of social media users use these platforms to communicate with brands. They expect the brand to respond to queries posted in the comments section, reply to their DMs and so on. Your customer response rate measures how many customer messages you have responded to.
Simply put, customer response rate = number of inquiries responded to / total number of inquiries x 100.
Prompt responses reflect good customer service and encourage brand loyalty. So, do your best to respond to queries as quickly as possible.
7. Cost per Click (CPC)
This is a crucial metric for paid social media campaigns. It shows you how much each click on the post/ ad costs you. When it comes to paid advertisement campaigns, the channel’s social analytics tab should show you the CPC numbers.
Let’s say you’re working with an influencer and want to calculate your CPC. All you need to do is divide the total amount spent by the number of clicks.
8. Post reach
Social media algorithms are constantly changing. Just because you have 10,000 followers doesn’t mean your posts are being read by all of them. Post reach indicates how many people from your existing follower list have viewed a post.
Post reach = total number of views / total number of followers x 100.
A low post reach must be addressed. Either the posts aren’t relevant to your followers or you’ve got bots as followers.
9. Share of voice
Your competitors are active on social media too. Share of Voice measures your presence against theirs. Here’s how you can calculate this.
Share of Voice = number of times your brand is mentioned / total number of mentions for all competing brands in a given time period x 100.
A low share of voice percentage means you’re running behind the curve. You need to catch up or you might lose customers to the competition.
10. Audience growth rate
This sounds like a vanity metric but helps you monitor your brand’s growth. As you may assume, it measures how quickly you gain new followers. You can find your audience growth rate with this formula:
Number of new followers in a given time period / total number of followers x 100
The more followers you have, the more sales you’re likely to see. Hence, if you’ve got a low growth rate, you need to work on getting new followers. A negative growth rate means you’re losing more followers than gaining. You might need to hire a social media expert.
You can also benchmark your audience growth rates against your competitor’s growth to assess the overall market.
11. Bounce rate
This is one of those metrics that should be as low as possible.
Bounce rate refers to the number of followers who click on a post but almost immediately leave the page it takes them to. This may happen for many reasons – the page may be irrelevant, it may load very slowly, it may not be mobile-friendly, etc.
Rather than calculate this rate on your own, set up Google Analytics for your website to automate calculations.
💡 SMBs looking for HR, Marketing, Technology and Funding solutions for their business.
Call Hello Jarvis 994 8000 800
12. Audience sentiment
Audience sentiment reveals what people feel about your brand. This is assessed on your follower’s word choice in brand mentions, use of emojis and the overall context of their communication with the brand.
Good reviews indicate a positive audience segment while reviews with words like disappointing could indicate a negative sentiment. Natural language processing tools can provide more detailed analysis.
If your social media metrics are what you expected – Hurrah! You’re doing things right. But, if your brand awareness or engagement rates are low, you may need to get a professional to look at your social media campaigns.
This doesn’t mean you need to get new furniture for your office. Instead, you could rent a desk as coworking spaces like The Office Pass (TOP). With flexible membership options and assured high-speed Wi-Fi, you can take on a consultant without worrying about overheads.
