Social media metrics are key performance indicators that you use to check how effective your social media marketing is. They help you measure your progress and see what you can do differently to gain better results.
When you track the metrics correctly, you will know exactly what you need to adjust, whether it’s your ad campaigns, content, or anything else. This is important for your overall social media marketing strategy and for reaching your goals.
The metrics you need to track for a successful campaign are reach and impressions, engagement, follower growth, click-through rate, conversion rate, ROI, content and audience performance, customer lifetime value, and so on. To measure them, it would be best if you combined analytics tools within a specific social media and the right third-party software.
When you advertise, you need to measure your reach, engagement, and ad conversions. That’s exactly where social media metrics can help you. They’ll show the reach of your ads, how many people interacted, and how many of them converted.
If any of this seems too complicated to do on your own, partnering with a social media marketing agency is the way to go. They can keep track of all your social media profiles and use their knowledge to help you improve your online presence in no time.
What Are Social Media Metrics?
Social media metrics are measurable KPIs (key performance indicators) used to assess the effectiveness of social media marketing. The most commonly measured social media metrics are engagement, reach, impressions, cost per click, conversions, etc.
These metrics are data used to track the performance of your social media channels and gauge the success of social media campaigns.
All of these metrics help businesses measure their progress in accomplishing the company’s goals through social media presence.
What is the Importance of Social Media Metrics?
The importance of social media metrics is that they turn your social media efforts into numbers, providing a direct insight into how well your brand is doing in the social media sphere.
Without social media metrics, tracking the progress of your ad campaigns, your content performance, and, ultimately, your profit and revenue from social media marketing wouldn’t be possible.
Think of them as a crucial connection between your real business goals and your success on social channels. It would be challenging, if not impossible, to create a smart social media strategy without metrics. You wouldn’t be able to connect social media efforts to your business goals, prove success, or spot trends that might require a strategy change.
What Are the 14 Social Media Metrics You Need to Track?
The 14 social media metrics you need to track are listed below.
- Reach and impressions
- Engagement (likes, shares, comments)
- Follower growth
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Conversion rate
- Cost per click and cost per conversion
- ROI
- Customer lifetime value
- Sentiment analysis
- Content performance and best engaging social media channels
- Audience demographics
- Bounce rate
- Brand mentions
- Customer service metrics
1. Reach and Impressions
Reach and impressions are fundamental metrics for measuring engagement. They both reveal how much your content is being shown and seen by the audience. While the two metrics share similarities, they actually measure different aspects of engagement.
In general, impressions measure how many times the audience viewed your content or ad, while reach measures the total number of people who saw your content.
Measuring reach and impressions can vary slightly depending on the social media platform you’re using. For example, Instagram counts impressions as the number of times your content, whether a story or a post, was shown to users. In contrast, on YouTube, impressions show how many times viewers watched a video after seeing a thumbnail.
Determining the benchmark for a ‘’good” percentage of impressions is challenging because this varies depending on the platform, your niche, the size of your audience, etc. Typically, 1-3 impressions per user is good enough if your goal is for your audience to better remember your ad.
The same applies to reach. In general, any number that tops your average numbers is considered a good reach.
2. Engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares, Views)
Engagement reflects the audience’s involvement and interaction with your content. In social media analytics, engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares, and views) are the main indicators of your online presence and your audience’s interactions with your content.
Likes measure user approval, shares propel content reach and broaden brand visibility, comments provide qualitative insights into audience engagement and community building, and views quantify content consumption, correlating with increased brand exposure.
These metrics collectively measure how successful your brand is in digital interaction. Tracking and interpreting them is crucial for strategic recalibration, optimizing digital presence, and nurturing the relationship with your audience. It’s vital to view these metrics not as isolated numbers but as dynamic manifestations of multifaceted digital interactions.
3. Follower Growth
Follower growth shows the overall count of new followers on your social media account within a designated timeframe. Monitoring this growth as a key performance indicator (KPI) provides insights into the level of engagement your brand and content are generating.
To calculate the follower growth rate, divide the number of followers you gained over a specific period by the number of followers you had when you started and multiply the number by 100 to get the percentage.
Although the number of followers is sometimes considered a vanity metric, a good, steady increase in the follower rate indicates that your strategy is working. The rate at which you’re gaining new followers is usually more important than the number of followers. It’s a reliable metric to track if you want to assess your overall engagement and reach.
You can use native apps on social media platforms or analytics tools to monitor and measure your audience growth.
If you’re consistently observing a 6 to 8% (or higher) increase in your follower count every month, it indicates you’re on the right track, and your community is steadily expanding. Conversely, if your audience growth rate is 5% or less, that’s an indicator that you should reconsider your approach.
4. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The click-through rate (CTR) shows how often people click on an ad or page compared to how many times it is seen. CTR is a metric commonly used to estimate the success of an advertising campaign and the performance of email campaigns.
To calculate your CTR, simply divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions.
Measuring CTR can help you learn your audience’s preferences and improve and adjust your content and ad campaigns.
A high CTR suggests that users find your content and ads relevant, which creates opportunities for more conversions and sales. However, the benchmark for ”good CTR” depends on the type of ad campaign and social media platforms you’re using. For example, a good CTR on YouTube is between 5% and 20%, while generally, a CTR between 3% and 5% for Google Ads is considered good.
5. Conversion Rate
Conversion rate gives insight into the number of users that performed a specific action (conversion). Conversion is not only about sales but any action you set as a goal. It can be anything from subscribing to a newsletter, downloading an ebook, or visiting a particular website page.
Conversion rates vary across social media platforms and industries. However, a conversion rate between 2-5% is considered successful. To calculate the conversion rate, for example, divide the total number of social media conversions by the desired metric (it can be clicks, impressions, or website traffic) and multiply the result by 100. Or you can use analytics tools to calculate this for you.
Tracking conversion rates is important because it measures the performance of your ad campaigns, web pages and the success of your social media marketing strategy. Understanding what percentage of your followers are completing the desired actions that drive your business allows you to evaluate how well your ad campaign is performing.
6. Cost Per Click and Cost Per Conversion
Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money spent on every click in an ad campaign, while cost per conversion measures the average cost of individual conversions.
Cost per click is used to determine the costs of showing ads to users on social media platforms, search engines, Google Display Network, and other publishers. It serves as both a performance metric and billing method, providing advertisers with insights into costs per click and the flexibility to set budgets based on user engagement.
On the other hand, cost-per-conversion measures the percentage of leads who converted into customers and how much you need to spend to gain one conversion. It is calculated by dividing the total amount of money spent on a marketing campaign by the number of conversions over the same period.
The average conversion rate depends on several factors, including your niche, the platform you’re using, etc, but generally, the average rate is between 1 percent and 3 percent. This means a large majority of your visitors will never end up converting (performing the desired action).
These two metrics are crucial for estimating the success of your campaigns and assessing if you’re spending your social media marketing budget effectively. However, CPCs alone don’t indicate overall campaign success; metrics like ROI, LTV, and engagement rates should be considered to assess the full impact on your business.
To optimize cost per conversion, focus on minimizing costs while increasing conversions through audience targeting, strategic keyword usage, and varied ad strategies.
7. ROI
Return on investment (ROI) is a metric that determines if your social media marketing strategy is paying off and what areas need improvement. Calculating your ROI helps you see if the resources you’re investing in content creation, paid campaigns, and social media ads campaigns are bringing you gains.
The basic calculation involves deducting the total cost spent on social media marketing from the returns and dividing the result by the total cost again. This formula will work when calculating the monetary gains of a social media campaign.
However, keep in mind that social media ROI can be tied to non-monetary metrics as well, so the calculation varies depending on what you consider gains. It can be anything from sign-up, downloads, or raising brand awareness. To calculate your ROI, you’ll have to attach monetary value to these seemingly intangible goals.
To make it easier, try segmenting your earnings and costs per social channel to figure out the specific ROI for each platform.
With the variety of handy calculation tools available today, you don’t have to be a math professional to calculate or get an estimate of your ROI.
8. Customer Lifetime Value
Customer lifetime value (CLTV) is the metric that gives insight into the total value a customer brings throughout their relationship with a brand or business. It considers both the revenue generated by a customer and the costs associated with acquiring and retaining that customer.
Ideally, your goal should be a 3:1 ratio in terms of CLTV to your customer acquisition costs. Even a modest improvement in customer retention is a big deal as it can result in a significant profit increase.
This metric has two variations; historical and predictive CLTV. The first one relies on data from the past to estimate the future buying behavior of customers, the latter one is used to forecast the actions of existing and new clients based on present circumstances.
To calculate CLTV, multiply the average purchase value by the average number of purchases and multiply the result by the average customer lifespan.
Knowing the CLTV helps you predict your business growth and adjust your marketing strategies and customer retention methods. This metric is also commonly used in calculating ROI as it can help you understand how much you are willing to invest in gaining customers.
9. Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis (or opinion mining) is a metric that helps you understand what people think and how they feel about your company or brand. It examines the data to determine whether the overall sentiment is negative, neutral, or positive.
Unlike comments, reactions, and likes, sentiment analysis goes much deeper and combines natural language processing and machine learning methods to collect and interpret opinions expressed on social media platforms.
To measure the sentiment score, evaluate the frequency of positive and negative language used by customers in their posts and comments. A sentiment score above 80% implies a positive customer experience, while a score below 50% indicates that the customer experience is mostly negative.
Of course, going over each post manually would be incredibly tedious, if not nearly impossible, especially because people will not always tag your brand in obscure forums and comment sections. Luckily, you can rely on various handy tools, like Hootsuite streams or Digimind, to help you track mentions across social media platforms and gather them all in one place.
Understanding the true sentiment behind metrics like shares, comments, and mentions will help you get to know your audience better, which is one of the most important aspects of successful social media marketing.
10. Content Performance
Content performance is a crucial metric for measuring the success of your overall social media strategy. It is one of the most important metrics to track whether you are a content creator, business owner, or a marketer.
To gain a deeper understanding of your content performance, track and analyze content performance metrics such as traffic, click-through rate (CTR), impressions, bounce rate, content shares and backlinks, email subscribers, conversions, and keyword rankings to evaluate the efficiency of your content. Analyzing these numbers allows you to identify the types of content that resonate with your audience and make the necessary changes based on this insight.
The first tell-a-tell sign that your content is rocking is usually an increase in engagement rate. Users will comment, react, and share posts they find meaningful and interesting. From there, other signs of success will follow – lower bounce rate, higher click-through rate, more email subscriptions, and more conversions.
Of course, the performance of your content will depend heavily on the platforms you choose. That’s why it’s important to consider the best social media platform for posting a particular kind of content for your target audience. Some platforms are great for improving engagement, while others excel at boosting impressions and conversions.
TikTok had the highest engagement rate per post when compared to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (X), according to Statista’s report conducted in 2020 and 2022.
There are various tools and techniques for measuring content performance. Some of the most commonly used include web analytics software such as Google Analytics, social media analytics platforms, and email marketing analytics.
11. Audience Demographics
Audience demographics allow you to create content that resonates with people’s interests and preferences, making it more visible on social platforms. By collecting and analyzing data like users’ age, gender, location, interests, education level, income, and behavior, you’ll get a compass for your content creation.
Most social media platforms have built-in tools that store data about the audience. By collecting and analyzing data through social media insights and reports, you will get a dynamic view of how it evolves over time across various platforms.
This information becomes your compass, guiding you to identify audience segments, personas, and patterns, allowing you to tailor relevant, engaging content that speaks directly to your target audience.
For more in-depth audience demographic analysis, you can also pull information from social listening tools and monitor how your audience interacts with your competitors, or conduct a survey.
12. Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of users who click on a link in your social post but leave the page without taking any action. In other words, it shows the number of visitors who only viewed a single page on your website – also called a non-engaged session or single-interaction session.
A desirable bounce rate is lower than 40%, and unlike other metrics, you want to keep it as low as possible. A lower bounce rate means more engagement, more interested users, and better overall experiences, leading to more conversions.
However, it’s almost impossible to have a bounce rate of zero because at least some people will leave your website, no matter the quality of your content.
To calculate the bounce rate, divide the total number of bounces (single-interaction sessions) by the total number of page visits.
Bounce rate is a metric that can help you evaluate how engaging your content is and help you identify potential issues with user experience, page design, and content relevance.
13. Brand Mentions
Brand mentions show when your product, company, or brand is discussed on any digital platform, including blog posts, social media posts, product reviews, and news articles. Keeping an eye on these mentions and handling any negative comments is crucial for your brand’s reputation.
To track brand mentions, you can choose one of many free and paid social mentions tools that allow you to monitor brand mentions in real time across social media platforms and websites.
You can also opt to track only social media mentions where you’ll gain insight into the volume of mentions of your brand on social media platforms over a given period. You can use a social media monitoring tool such as HootSuite or Mention.com to track all social media mentions in one place.
14. Customer Service Metrics (Response Time and Resolution Rate)
Customer service metrics in social media marketing, particularly response time and resolution rate, are essential for assessing the effectiveness of a brand’s online interactions.
Response time measures how quickly a brand jumps into action when customers reach out on social media. It’s a critical metric because timely responses are vital for customer satisfaction and can positively influence brand reputation. A rapid response time, ideally within hours, reflects attentiveness and a commitment to customer needs.
Resolution rate, on the other hand, measures the brand’s ability to successfully address and resolve customer issues or inquiries on social media. This metric provides insight into the efficiency of the customer service team.
Brands often utilize customer service metrics to set benchmarks, refine strategies, and enhance customer experiences. By consistently monitoring and optimizing these metrics, businesses can build stronger customer relationships, foster loyalty, and establish a positive online reputation.
How Do You Measure Social Media Metrics?
To measure social media metrics effectively, you’ll need to combine social media platform analytics tools, third-party analytics software, and specific measurement techniques.
Most social media platforms have built-in tools for tracking the most relevant metrics (e.g., Facebook Insights, YouTube Analytics). These tools provide insight into metrics such as reach, engagement, follower growth, and other relevant metrics.
Another free analytics tool widely used by most marketers is Google Analytics. This external tool tracks and reports website traffic as well as social networking sites and applications and helps you measure conversions and your Google advertising ROI.
Adding URL trackers like UTM parameters to your Google Analytics will allow you to monitor click-through rates to understand which social media platforms drive the most traffic to your website.
For a more comprehensive insight into your social media metrics across multiple platforms, you might opt for a third-party paid software like Hootsuite or Talkwalker.
Another important step in accurately measuring your social media metrics is to regularly compare your stats against industry benchmarks to understand where you stand and identify areas for improvement.
Measuring social media metrics is an ongoing process that needs to be adapted over time, considering the dynamic shifts in trends and changes in algorithms on social media platforms.
What Tools Can Help You Measure Social Media Metrics?
Tools that can help you measure social media metrics include built-in tools on social platforms like Instagram Insights and Facebook Insights, as well as third-party analytics software, both paid and free.
While built-in tools provide insights into content performance and paid campaign success, they may have limitations in gathering certain data points. For example, you can track certain metrics like reach, post engagement, and impressions while for metrics like customer lifetime value and conversion rate, you would need a separate tool.
For a more comprehensive analysis, especially when dealing with multiple platforms, third-party tools such as UnboxSocial, Brandwatch, Talkwalker, and Keyhole can efficiently gather and analyze data across various social media accounts.
Some of these tools are great for sentiment analysis and monitoring brand mentions, while others are perfect for collecting information about specific ad campaigns, so it’s important to choose the tool that corresponds with your needs.
What is the Difference Between Reach and Impressions?
The difference between reach and impressions is that impressions measure how many times your content is displayed, while reach gauges the unique number of users who saw it, either from organic or paid traffic.
Reach will always be less than or equal to impressions. Let’s say a post was viewed 1000 times by 500 people – its impressions would be 1000, while its reach would be only 500.
How to Calculate Cost Per Conversion?
To calculate cost per conversion, divide the sum of money spent on social media marketing by the number of conversions over the same period.
Cost per conversion tells you how much you invested into generating a conversion or acquiring a customer. It is an important metric to consider when planning your social media marketing budget and evaluating the effectiveness of your social media strategy.
How to Know if Your Content is Reaching the Target Audience?
One of the surefire indicators that your content is reaching the target audience is a boost in engagement. When your audience finds your content relevant, relatable, and inspiring, they’ll engage by commenting, sharing, and interacting with your posts, leading to great improvements in your engagement stats.
This heightened engagement often translates into increased sales, conversions, and enhanced brand visibility and awareness. An uptick in all these metrics indicates that your content effectively reaches the right audience.
If you’re running a social media ad campaign, you can optimize it for specific demographics and audiences likely to respond positively to your ads. So, if your campaign hits the mark, the number of leads and conversions will also increase.
What is the Effect of Social Media Metrics on Social Media Goals?
The effect of social media metrics on social media goals is invaluable in measuring the success of your overall goals. Social media metrics help you determine progress toward social media goals and evaluate the effectiveness of a social media strategy in achieving them.
By tracking social media metrics, you gain tangible insights into campaigns’ weak spots, helping you to adjust your strategy to move closer to achieving social media goals. Each goal is tied to different metrics and KPIs, so knowing what metrics to monitor and what the desirable benchmarks are for each one will help you estimate how far you are from reaching your social media goals.
How Do Social Media Metrics Impact Social Media Advertising?
Social media metrics’ impact on social media advertising is significant because they serve as diagnostic tools for campaign success. These metrics provide real-time data on how an advertisement is performing, offering insights into its reach, engagement, and conversion rates.
Monitoring social media metrics allows you to swiftly identify what’s working and what needs refinement. For instance, if a particular ad garners high engagement but lacks conversions, it signals an opportunity to tweak the call-to-action or landing page.
Engagement metrics, such as likes, comments, and shares, reflect how well an ad resonates with the audience. A high engagement rate indicates that the content is compelling and elicits a positive response. This not only boosts the ad’s visibility but also contributes to organic reach as platforms prioritize content with higher engagement.
Moreover, social media metrics empower advertisers to better understand their audience. Demographic data, including age, gender, location, and interests, provides a comprehensive profile of who is engaging with the content.
This information is invaluable for refining targeting strategies. For instance, if the majority of engagement comes from a specific age group, advertisers can tailor future campaigns to cater more precisely to that demographic.
Conversion metrics, such as click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates, offer a direct insight into the effectiveness of the ad in driving desired actions. A high CTR indicates that the audience is not only viewing the ad but also taking the next step. Analyzing these metrics allows you to allocate budget wisely, focusing resources on ads that are delivering tangible results.
Metrics such as cost per conversion, cost per impression, number of leads, and conversion rate as well as your ROI and ROAS (return on ad spent) can tell you if the investment in paid ads has paid off.
Finally, metrics contribute to the iterative nature of social media advertising. The digital landscape evolves rapidly, and what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. Continuous monitoring of metrics enables advertisers to adapt when needed. If a particular ad format or creative element is underperforming, advertisers can pivot swiftly, preventing wastage of resources and ensuring campaigns stay relevant.
What Are the Most Important Metrics for Awareness Campaigns?
The most important metrics for awareness campaigns include reach, impressions, brand mentions, branded search traffic, and audience growth rate.
Also, conducting social listening is another effective way to assess the impact of your awareness campaign on social media.
When it comes to checking brand awareness, it’s about more than just the follower count. It is more about the interaction percentage between the followers you already have than the number of followers.
What Are the Most Important Metrics for Engagement Campaigns?
The most important metrics for engagement campaigns are likes, comments, shares, views, and click-through rates. Engagement campaigns on social media are designed to foster interaction, build relationships, and enhance brand visibility.
Engagement campaigns on social media are strategically crafted to foster meaningful interactions, build relationships with your audience, and enhance the overall visibility of your brand.
By focusing on these key metrics, you gain a comprehensive understanding of how well your engagement campaigns are performing and make informed decisions to optimize future strategies.
What Are the Most Important Metrics for Traffic Campaigns?
The most important metrics for traffic campaigns are cost per click, click-through rate, bounce rate, and landing page views. They help assess your campaign’s success by showing audience engagement and website traffic from social media.
Analyzing CTR and bounce rate offers valuable insights into your audience’s preferences. It’s crucial to keep an eye on both metrics simultaneously to discern whether adjustments should be made to your landing page or if your ad copy needs fine-tuning.
To gauge the returns on your investment in traffic campaigns, keep a close watch on metrics like cost per click, cost per conversion, conversion rate, ROI, and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). These metrics shed light on the effectiveness of your campaigns and help you make informed decisions to optimize your strategies.
What Are the Most Important Metrics for Lead Generation Campaigns?
The most important metrics for lead generation campaigns are cost per lead, conversion rate, and customer lifetime value (CLV).
Keeping an eye on CLTV and ARPC is essential for estimating the benefits of your lead generation campaign, as it allows you to gauge the earning potential per single lead.
By analyzing website traffic in lead generation campaigns, you get valuable information about your audience demographics, which is crucial in estimating the needs of potential leads (customers).
What Are the Most Important Metrics for Conversion Campaigns?
The most important metrics for conversion campaigns include conversion rate, cost per click, return on investment (ROI), click-through rate (CTR), customer lifetime value (CLV), and of course, conversions.
Conversion is not just about making a sale. It could be any action you want users to take, whether it’s signing up for a webinar, subscribing to an email newsletter, downloading an ebook, writing a review, or completing a survey. Tracking the numbers for any of these actions gives you valuable insights into how well your conversion campaign is doing.
How Can a Social Media Advertising Agency Help You Track and Analyze Social Media Metrics?
A social media advertising agency can help you set up and optimize your social media accounts. This involves setting up your social profiles, adding tracking pixels, monitoring KPIs, and ensuring that the platforms match your advertising goals.
Experts at these agencies know the ins and outs of each platform, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn. They don’t just set up your campaigns; they use advanced analytics tools to keep a close eye on every metric that matters – likes, shares, comments, reach, impressions, and more.
They also keep track of demographic details like age, gender, location, and interests, which helps them tailor content that resonates with your audience. Plus, they use this data to tweak targeting strategies, ensuring your content hits the right mark.
In short, a social media advertising agency is like your digital navigator, making sure you track the right metrics to reach your social media goals. With their expertise and cutting-edge tools, they optimize every aspect of your social media presence to improve your performance.
