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<\/p>\r\nPlanning a social media campaign is only part of the picture. The rest of it involves measuring your progress using established social media metrics that determine how successful a campaign is.<\/p>\r\n
The catch? Not all social media metrics are created equal. Meaning, some are highly valuable, while others aren\u2019t worth the pursuit as they don\u2019t reflect actual progress.<\/p>\r\n
So what are the social media metrics you should be monitoring?<\/p>\r\n
In this post, we round up the top nine metrics that experts themselves are tracking. We also asked what they consider to be vanity metrics and not worth the effort. Finally, we share the actual tools marketers are using to track social media metrics.<\/p>\r\n
Ready to learn? Let\u2019s dig in.<\/p>\r\n
We kicked things off by asking which social media platforms marketers used the most. Facebook and LinkedIn took the lead, with Twitter on their heels.<\/p>\r\n
Here are the numbers: 86% of marketers leverage Facebook and LinkedIn for their social media marketing, while 81% use Twitter.<\/p>\r\n
As for more visual platforms, 76% use Instagram and 46% play with YouTube marketing. The least popular were Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok. One five, three, and one marketer (respectively) of the 37 marketers we surveyed use them.<\/p>\r\n
<\/p>\r\n
Unsure how all these social platforms can help you grow your business? Dive into this piece on why social media is vital for your business<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\r\n Now that you know which social media platforms are popular, the question that naturally follows is: How often do marketers post on social? Most of the marketers, 32% to be specific, post every other day.<\/p>\r\n Another 24% post at least once daily and 11% post twice daily. A smaller 8% said they post thrice daily, and another 5% post over three times a day.<\/p>\r\n On a less frequent cadence, 11% and 5% of marketers posted twice and once in a week, respectively. Only 3% said they posted two to three times in a month.<\/p>\r\n How do marketers stick with their publishing frequency? The majority 92% said they have a planned posting calendar, which means only a few marketers, at 8%, don\u2019t formally plan their posts. Since we\u2019re discussing social media metrics, it made sense to inquire about goal-setting. Some interesting results turned up here: 73% of marketers set and track detailed, measurable social media goals. The remaining 27%, on the other hand, are currently working on their goals.<\/p>\r\n Other goals include increasing website traffic (59%), growing presence in search results (49%), and increasing sales or purchases via social media (35%).<\/p>\r\n With goals out of the way, we got to the meat of the matter: social media analytics<\/a>. Here, we asked three questions, starting with:<\/p>\r\n Again, Facebook took first place, with 81% of marketers tracking metrics on the popular social platform. Twitter and Instagram came in second, with 68% of marketers monitoring the two channels. About half, at 51%, also tracked metrics on LinkedIn.<\/p>\r\n On top of that, 32%, 8%, and 3% of the marketers tracked progress on YouTube, Snapchat, and Pinterest, respectively. Here\u2019s the visual breakdown:<\/p>\r\n Next, we asked marketers to choose what specific social media metrics they keep tabs on. We learned:<\/p>\r\n Lastly, we curated a list from the tools that marketers use for monitoring their social metrics. These tools are:<\/p>\r\n Before we give you the complete list of social media metrics our experts think are essential to track, we want to make one thing clear: The exact metrics to track depend on your goals or campaign objective.<\/p>\r\n \u201cIt really depends on what you want to measure and how you want to display that information,\u201d notes Abhishek Joshi from Dog with Blog<\/a>. For instance, \u201cI track engagement rate and follower growth as an index toward how our social channels and content strategy are performing amid our audiences.<\/p>\r\n \u201cWith respect to reporting, I sum up interactions (URL clicks, comments, likes, shares) and divide by the impression count to calculate engagement rate, and accordingly devise our content strategy and social media performance. I also track website traffic that’s originating via social media. We have set up UTM campaign strategy on Google Analytics for the same.\u201d<\/p>\r\n In short, \u201cthere\u2019s [no] one-size-fits-all answer to this,\u201d in Outsmart Labs\u2019<\/a>\u00a0David Azar\u2019s words. \u201cFor an awareness play, metrics such as estimated ad recall lift (eARL) provide valuable brand retention insights, while conversions (be it add to carts, purchases, leads) are those most important for those whose campaigns depend on user behavior and action.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Now that we\u2019ve established there\u2019s no fixed formula, let\u2019s look at some of the basic social media metrics that can be helpful to track for most business goals:<\/p>\r\n \u201cMentions may be one of the most important social media metrics to track,\u201d points out Jordan \u00a0Lassiter of Optimism Miami SEO<\/a>. Why? \u201cBecause you gain valuable insight into what people are saying about your brand and how it\u2019s being perceived by others.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\r\n Yulia Vinokurova of Chanty<\/a>\u00a0is of the same opinion: \u201cThe most important social media metric for us is the number of brand mentions we get because those are earned and not bought or built.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Want to track brand mentions all over the internet? Vinokurova tells you how: \u201cGoogle Alerts is a great way to track this because it monitors every time your brand, business, or product is mentioned across the entire internet. This can allow you to track trends in your audiences, like language and location. You can also see what platforms you are most successful with and adjust your social media marketing plans accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Next up, monitor your conversions from social media. Rachele Wright of Wright Outcomes<\/a> comments, \u201cConversions, in some capacity, is the most important metric to track. You can use social media to build a brand and relationships, but that ultimately should lead to action.<\/p>\r\n \u201cWhether it’s conversion of people clicking the link in your bio and taking action on joining an email list, purchasing something, or even just sending you a DM. You want people to move forward with you in some capacity, so you want your efforts to convert.\u201d<\/p>\r\n \u201cThis equates to your return on investment for social media,\u201d clarifies Alana Basloe from Original Herkimer Cheese<\/a>. \u201cYou may have high engagement or website purchases. However, you need to look at how much you spent to get that result.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Put another way, if you\u2019ve been investing a lot of time and resources to get a handful of link-clicks, you might want to reevaluate your social media strategy.<\/p>\r\n This metric \u201clets you know how often your content is actually intriguing your audience,\u201d observes Kintell\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0Mark Hayes. \u201cI would say this is one of the more important ones \u2013 it\u2019s a real, genuine interaction and is much more meaningful than likes. It\u2019s a prospective customer’s way of saying, \u2018Alright \u2013 I\u2019m interested. Tell me more.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\r\n Petra Odak from Better Proposals<\/a>\u00a0agrees. \u201cClick-through rate is extremely important for us because it shows us how interesting the content is to our readers and whether it was able to get them from the platform to our website.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Based on their goals of \u201cdriving traffic to our blog,\u201d Dakota Butler from Trend Capital<\/a>\u00a0elaborates, \u201clink clicks are crucial for us to track. Link clicks can give insight into what posts and copy are actually getting users to go to our site.\u201d<\/p>\r\n According to My Pet Child<\/a>\u2019s John Cho, \u201cEngagement [is a crucial metric] because if no one is interacting with it, sharing it or using it, you’ve wasted your time.\u201d<\/p>\r\n \u201cEngagement at least gives an idea of how many people saw and cognitively processed your content,\u201d explains Abir Syed from UpCounting<\/a>. Other metrics, like \u201crevenue is a tough one, as attribution to the brand awareness generated from organic social media will not always be strong. It\u2019s a weak metric in the grand scheme of things. And the number of followers isn\u2019t too informative, especially with low organic reach.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Closely related to tracking engagement is the engagement rate metrics. Chelsea Flower of Scott Social<\/a>\u00a0explains \u201cthis metric shows the overall engagements (likes, comments, saves, and story replies) as a percentage of profile impressions to indicate how engaged people are with the brand, RivalIQ.<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe best way to increase your followers consistently and organically is to leverage your current audience! Tracking brand mentions, retweets, and shares can help you adjust your strategy and maximize sharable content.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Another super important social media metric according to the experts we surveyed is shares. Sturgeon Chrisie of Second Skin Audio<\/a>\u00a0talks about it: \u201cWe always like to look at the number of times our content has been shared. Each time your post is shared by someone else, it\u2019s shared with an audience you may have not reached before.<\/p>\r\n \u201cWe focus on posting the most interesting and engaging content possible so people are more likely to share it with others. We know when our content gets shared a lot, it\u2019s going to lead to more interest in our business and more traffic to our website.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Andrei Vasilescu from DontPayFull<\/a>\u00a0insists, \u201cthe most important social media metric to track is the number of website visitors that come directly from social media profiles.<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe primary target of our social media marketing is to drive online traffic to our business website. Our social media content is made especially for this target. The number of online visitors our website gets within a specific time frame after publishing new social content determines the success of that social content.\u201d<\/p>\r\n In the same vein, Tankarium<\/a>\u2019s Sherry Mae adds, \u201cThe most vital metric we track is the site traffic we receive from our social media channels. It tells us the effectiveness of our social media strategies in boosting traffic to our site.<\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n \u201cTraffic from our social media contains mostly high-quality leads with a proven history of making purchases. We attribute the cause to the coinciding interest with our brand\u2019s offerings.<\/p>\r\n \u201cAfter all, these are internet users who followed our page to read interesting and entertaining posts about our niche. That makes them more likely to convert than traditional users who stumbled on our site by accident.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Anna Tatelman from Tampa SEO Services<\/a>\u00a0puts the last essential metric on the table. \u201cOne of the most crucial social media metrics to track is the virality rate. Your virality rate reveals how many users have shared your social media post in relation to how many unique views that post received,\u201d she elaborates.<\/p>\r\n \u201cThis is one of our favorite metrics because it reveals which of your content pieces are not simply receiving likes, but getting active engagement. While a post with 100,000 likes is exciting, those 100,000 likes aren\u2019t necessarily helping your business if the post has a 0.5% virality rate. On the other hand, if you have a post with 5,000 likes and a 20% virality rate, that post is ultimately doing far more to promote your business.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Now that you know the nine social media metrics you should be tracking, let\u2019s see a list of some that might just be wasting your time:<\/p>\r\n \u201cLikes are completely irrelevant and comments are becoming more and more irrelevant, especially on platforms like Instagram,\u201d indicates Wright Outcomes\u2019 Rachele Wright.<\/p>\r\n Here\u2019s why: \u201cWe digest and consume so much content on a daily basis, the mindless action of double-tapping on something or hitting a like button is just something that doesn\u2019t accurately reflect engagement.<\/p>\r\n \u201cAdditionally, with the increase of bots and people commenting just to get their own brand name out there, it’s hard to really track if a comment is relevant to engagement as well.\u201d<\/p>\r\n What\u2019s more, \u201ca \u2018like\u2019 has no direct correlation with true awareness or purchase intent,\u201d shares David Azar from Outsmart Labs. \u201cThat isn\u2019t to say qualified potential customers or leads can\u2019t originate from the humble like, however, there are more advanced and qualified metrics to track in order to assess real intent and value.\u201d<\/p>\r\n \u201cFollower count is useful, but only to an extent,\u201d says John Cho from My Pet Child. \u201cWith new algorithms, you could have 100,000 followers but your posts are only reaching one-third of them, so follower count isn’t the most reliable metric when it comes to using data for strategy. Engagement and reach are much more important to track.\u201d<\/p>\r\n On top of that, \u201cwhile [followers] can be indicative of the popularity of a brand,\u201d notes Peter Mann from SC Vehicle Hire<\/a>\u00a0\u201cyou could be very popular but not sell a single product to your audience, or have a small following that is very loyal and purchases all your products.\u201d<\/p>\r\nSocial media posting frequency<\/h2>\r\n
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<\/p>\r\n![\"social](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/pasted-image-0-46.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\r\nSetting social\u00a0media goals<\/h2>\r\n
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Now for which goals marketers set on social media:<\/p>\r\n\r\n
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<\/p>\r\nTracking social media metrics: Platforms they monitor, tools they use, and more<\/h2>\r\n
Which social channel do you track metrics on?<\/h3>\r\n
![\"social](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/pasted-image-0-50.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\r\nWhich social metrics do you track?<\/h3>\r\n
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<\/p>\r\n\u00a0<\/h3>\r\n
Tools to track social media metrics<\/h3>\r\n
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9 essential social media metrics to track<\/h2>\r\n
1. Brand mentions<\/h3>\r\n
2. Conversions<\/h3>\r\n
3. Cost\/results<\/h3>\r\n
4. Click-through rates or link clicks<\/h3>\r\n
5. Engagement<\/h3>\r\n
6. Engagement rate<\/h3>\r\n
7. Shares<\/h3>\r\n
8. Website referrals<\/h3>\r\n
Planning to increase the leads you get from social media? Read how 66 marketers are generating leads from social media marketing<\/a>.<\/div><\/div>\r\n9. Virality rate<\/h3>\r\n
3 social media metrics that don\u2019t really matter<\/h2>\r\n
1. Likes<\/h3>\r\n
2. Follower count<\/h3>\r\n