Social media metrics: The basics! What is the bare minimum you should be tracking and why
The world of social media analytics can be confusing, especially if you don't know where to start. You probably have heard terms like brand awareness, reach, and growth rate being thrown around, but what do they mean? Are they even important?
The simple answer is yes. Yes, you should be looking at your social media analytics!
Social media analytics is the process of collecting performance data from social media platforms and evaluating that data to inform future decisions.
You probably spend a lot of time building quality content for your social channels, but what happens after that? That's where social media analytics come in. By looking at the data, we can better understand how each piece of content performs and use that to build a clearer social media marketing strategy.
This all may sound a bit technical and a lot overwhelming (and it can be!) but in this post, we're just dipping our toes into the world of social media analytics. We'll be taking you through some of the basic social media metrics that every business should be paying attention to and why.
Reach & Impressions
What are they?
Reach and impressions are two basic metrics you should be reviewing for your social media accounts. Reach and impressions are important metrics to measure brand awareness and indicate how many people are actually seeing your content.
Reach and impressions are often used interchangeably, and while they are related, they actually measure two different things.
Reach is the total number of people who see your content. Reach measures the number of unique people who have seen your content. This means if someone viewed your post a total of 3 times, they would only be counted as one viewer within your reach.
Impressions are the number of times your content is shown. Think of this as 1 impression = 1 set of eyeballs on your content. So, if someone sees your post 3 times, this would be counted as 3 impressions.
How to use them?
Most, if not all, of the social platforms will have reach and impressions as the first listed metrics because they are a good initial indicator of how your content is performing.
Now let's talk about how we can use reach and impression numbers to grow our social media.
Again, reach and impressions provide a sense of how many people or accounts we are reaching with any given piece of content. So you'll want to take a look at a handful of posts to see the fluctuations in reach between them. This will help you get a general understanding of how many accounts your content is reaching to date.
Keeping this in mind, now take a look at the posts with the highest reach numbers. These are good guideposts to understanding what's working for your business!
Are there any similarities that you can draw between the posts with the largest reach? Maybe they're both about a certain topic or maybe they were posted around a similar time? What about the posts with lower reach. Are there any clear differences between those with higher reach?
Now, start to experiment with your social content and take note of how reach and impressions change. If you see that your highest reach posts, for example, were both reels and your lowest were static images, try posting more reels and see if that builds more momentum.
Reach can also be impacted by the day and time of day you post. If you post at 5am and your audience tends to be more night owls, you might find yourself getting lost in the shuffle. Play around with posting at different times to see how your reach and impression levels change (more on that below!).
Remember there are no definitive answers to what works, hence everyone's frustration with everchanging algorithms, but it's important to test and grow your learnings!
Engagement
As social media continues to evolve, the ways people can engage with content grows along with it. Engagement is an umbrella term to encompass all the ways in which someone can interact with your content whether that be clicks, likes, shares, or comments.
Reviewing your social engagement takes your analysis one step further to track how actively involved your audience is with your content, and in turn, gives an indication of how effective your content is.
The number and name of engagement metrics vary between social platforms, but for the most part, you'll be able to track clicks, likes, shares, and comments across all of them.
In addition to viewing the total number of engagements your post has received, you can also calculate an engagement rate.
An engagement rate measures how many people actually engaged with your content versus how many people saw it. In other words, are you reaching the right people with the right content?
To calculate the engagement rate of your social media, you can take the number of engagements on a particular post and divide that by the number of impressions that post received and multiply that number by 100%.
Engagement Rate = Number of Engagements / Number of Impressions x 100%
So if one of your posts received 1,000 impressions and 40 engagements, that post would have an engagement rate of 4%.
Over the years, engagement rates have gone down as the algorithms have made it harder for content to be seen. According to RivalIQ's benchmark report, the median Instagram engagement across all industries is 0.98%, so you can keep that in your back pocket as you review your own analytics.
How to use Engagement in your social strategy
Engagement is arguably one of the most important metrics on every social platform as it helps to build a positive brand experience and develop a connection with a community.
Now that we know what engagements consist of and how to calculate an engagement rate, let's better understand how we can use engagement metrics to grow our social media.
Just like the other metrics outlined, it's important to track them regularly so you can identify any trends - both positive and negative - to help you understand what's working and what's not working.
Compare your posts that have higher engagement numbers. Do they have any similarities with one another? What did you do differently here than posts with lower engagement?
Oftentimes, getting creative with content can help with engagement because you're inviting your audience to be a part of the conversation. Here are some ideas to test out:
Go live and connect with your audience in real-time
Ask questions
Host an "Ask Me Anything" and have your audience ask you questions
Put up polls to get customer insight or feedback
Spotlight customers
Host a giveaway or contest
Create custom brand stickers or gifs for Instagram Stories
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but testing out different approaches and analyzing the performance data will allow you to develop a stronger social media strategy.
Speaking of, check out these Instagram Story Prompts for some IG Story engagement ideas!
Time of Day
Another key metric you should be taking a look at on social media is when your audience is most engaged.
Posting content at the time(s) when most of your followers are most active will give your content a better chance to be seen by more people (increase your impressions and reach), which can lead to increased engagement.
By taking a look at when your audience is most active, you can put together a clearer social media marketing strategy that includes when to post content so it better aligns with your audience's behavior and the algorithm.
How to find and use Time of Day in your social strategy
You can track analytics around the optimal posting time directly in your insights on Instagram and Twitter, but unfortunately, platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest don't have the same data breakdown available.
There is a lot of research out there that highlights the optimal time to post on each social platform, including TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest. This can be a great start to developing a strategy, but in reality, there is no one-size-fits-all time to post.
If you want to take this a step further and get specific information about your target audience and their activity across TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest, we suggest using Google Analytics is a free analytics tool that tracks and reports website traffic. In this tool, you can also gather robust data on how people are interacting with your social media accounts by pulling custom reports on the best days and times to post on social media, along with your social media traffic by date and hour.
Once you have an idea of when your audience is most active, use those as a guideline of when to post your content and make note of how those posts perform.
Follower Growth Rate
Lastly, I recommend taking a look at your follower growth rate as a part of your social media analytics.
It's easy to get wrapped up in the number of followers you have, but over time we've seen that the number of followers doesn't necessarily correlate to success on social media.
What's more important than the sheer number of followers is your follower growth rate.
Your follower growth rate tracks how your following changes over a period of time and can give you a better idea of whether or not your content is attracting and building a new audience.
A few social media platforms, like Instagram, have a similar calculation built into their insights tab, but you can also calculate your follower growth rate using this formula:
Follower Growth Rate = New Followers / Starting Follower Count x 100%
For example, if Company ABC starts with 1,500 followers and gains 300 more over the course of a month, using this formula they have a follower growth rate of 20%.
How to use Follower Growth Rate in your social strategy
Keeping tabs on your follower growth rate will give you a good idea of whether or not your business is expanding its reach and building an audience.
If you see a steady increase in followers over time, it might be fair to say that you're on the right track as it seems the type and amount of content you're putting out is reaching the right people and they want more.
If there are certain time periods when you see your follower growth rate increase more than normal, you might find it helpful to take a look at what content you posted during that timeframe to give the metrics more context. Did you post more content during that time than you normally do? Did you host a giveaway or announce a sale that incentivized your audience to take action?
On the other hand, if you're seeing slower growth it may be time to try a new strategy.
Maybe you weren't able to consistently get content out so you fell back in the algorithm. If so, try to prioritize consistent content. If you also saw a decrease in reach and engagement during this time, that might indicate that the content you're posting isn't resonating as much so you might want to test new ideas or formats (video, reels, going live, etc.).
Social media is a powerful and limitless way to grow your online presence, but with so much out there it's easy to get overwhelmed and feel like you have no clear strategy. That's why we've highlighted the basic social media metrics you should keep an eye on.
Reviewing these social media metrics more frequently will help you understand what is actually working versus what is not and enable you to make smarter decisions for your business.
Loved that post? Check out some more posts all about Social Strategy below!
How to Grow your Business and get Clients with Instagram in 2022
How to Make your Instagram Reels go Viral
Which Social Media Platforms Should You Use For Your Business
8 Tips for Social Media Marketing
Our Go-To Tools & Techniques for Scheduling Content
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