The great thing and tough thing about social media is that you can track almost every single detail through social media metrics.
The ability to effectively measure social media progress depends on understanding which metrics are most important to your business, based on your goals.
You should track a number of metrics, depending on the size of your budget, team, and business objectives. Where available, we’ve included benchmarks to help you set realistic performance goals.
What are social media metrics?
The data points that show you how well your social media strategy is performing are called social media metrics.
Metrics are important for understanding how your content is performing and how much money you can earn from social media. They can help you improve your content and grow your audience.
Why is tracking social media metrics so important?
Social media metrics are a way to measure whether your social media strategy is effective and how it can be improved. They show how much time and money you are spending on social media and how much you are getting in return.
You need metrics to understand what is happening with your business on social media. You can use this information to create a strategy, measure your success, and spot any negative trends that might require a change in strategy.
11 Most Important Social Media Metrics to Track in 2022
1. Volume of mentions
The number of mentions your content receives can give you an idea of how interesting and engaging it is. By looking at the volume of mentions, you can get an understanding of how often people are talking about your brand.
Charting the volume of social media mentions over time can help identify any yearly changes in interest. This could help you determine the best time to reach potential customers and deliver better results.
The interest in your product might spike at various points throughout the year.
There is typically a surge in demand for software as a service (SaaS) products around Black Friday in November and in the weeks leading up to it.
Since potential customers are actively researching potential purchases during Black Friday, it would be beneficial to invest more in promotion leading up to the event. This would be based on the volume of mentions metric.
2. Reach
Make sure you’re paying attention to your reach metric, especially if you’re running any social media campaigns.
The reach of your social media will tell you how many people have seen the posts on your social channels and how the content is spreading across social networks.
Furthermore, the number of followers you have quantifies the potential customers you can influence. Starting a blog with the idea of building an audience and, consequently, a customer base, is a smart move. Moreover, the size of the audience you want to reach indicates how successful you can be. You can assume that followers are interested in your message and product. Furthermore, the number of followers you have quantifies the potential customers you have the ability to influence. Therefore, starting a blog with the idea of building an audience and, consequently, a customer base, is a smart move.
The higher your product’s reach, the bigger audience could have seen it. Measuring this parameter from a technical point of view is easy.
To create a dedicated hashtag, come up with a keyword and set up a social media monitoring project.
Brand awareness is associated with the volume of mentions and reach.
An increase in brand awareness will help establish your company as a leader in your field. This, in turn, creates trust between your customers and your brand. Additionally, it helps you reach new audiences.
3. Sentiment
The volume of mentions is a metric you can use to measure your social media performance.
Other metrics can provide you with the information you need to make better decisions.
The sentiment in social media mentions can tell you whether the talk is positive, negative, or neutral. This metric is useful when you’re running campaigns.
A high volume of mentions might initially suggest that the campaign is a success. After all, people are talking about your brand. However, a closer look might tell a different story.
But that’s not the whole picture.
If you are seeing a lot of mentions and the sentiment is mostly negative, this is a sign that a social media crisis is coming. You need to put your crisis management plan into action.
The Brand24 tool allows you to easily filter out negative and positive feedback so you can quickly address unsatisfied customers and prevent a crisis from escalating.
4. Engagement rate
Your content should encourage discussion and interaction from users. Tracking engagement metrics can be helpful in determining the success of your content.
An algorithm that decides which content to show first on a timeline looks at things like the number and type of interactions on your social media account. So, having lots of likes, clicks, shares, and comments is essential if you want your content to reach a lot of people.
The more interactions (comments, likes, shares) your posts have, the more people will see your content and the bigger exposure you’ll have.
The level of engagement (determined by numbers and types of interactions) is one of the most important social media metrics. It will show you how interesting your posts are.
Organic mentions are a big factor in engagement and reach. It’s worth it to keep track of your brand mentions and interact with them. Your followers will appreciate it, and it will be easier to build a community. You can also improve customer satisfaction by responding to complaints.
The sentiment and engagement metrics will help you deliver great customer service to your clients.
Having social media channels allows you to communicate with your clients more openly.
If you’re able to identify any issues that your customers regularly encounter, you’ll be sitting on a goldmine of knowledge. By solving these issues, you can turn clients into brand ambassadors. Additionally, by reducing the average response time, you can improve your social interactions and customer satisfaction.
5. Influencers
Influencer marketing is a controversial topic among social media marketers. Some people love it and some people hate it. The surge in negative comments about influencers is caused mainly by a lack of research and basing the decisions on faulty premises.
But, the right public persona can have a significant impact on your business’ bottom line through sales. Therefore, it is crucial to choose the right public persona when planning a social media marketing campaign.
The right person to work with can be determined by choosing the right social media metrics.
A social media monitoring tool can be used to check for mentions of your brand or industry, and to compile a list of the most influential social media users who are talking about it. This can be helpful in planning your social media strategy and outreach.
By compiling an influencer score with sentiment analysis, you can ensure that you will not be working with someone who is often associated with negative emotions.
If one of your marketing tactics involves working with influencers, you should closely examine the “share of voice” metric. This metric can be used as a substitute for influence scores.
An influencer campaign is one of the most effective campaigns on social media, especially if your key performance indicator is an engagement metric.
An influencer is someone who can help promote your product or service by adding social credibility. Influencers act as digital marketing evangelists, sharing positive information about your brand with others.
6. The share of voice
I would like to focus on the last metric, which is called share of voice.
The “engagement rate” is a metric that social media users can look at to see how engaged followers are with a given post.
If more people are talking about your company online, it means your channels are performing better. You can use this metric along with social media sentiment analysis to figure out who is talking about your company and how they feel about it.
The most important part of your social media analysis is the share of voice.
The influence of your profile depends on how you use it. If you are a starting point for discussion among your followers, then you are more influential.
If you want to find out if you are the leader in your industry, the share of voice metric will help you.
7. Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score
There are more customer service metrics than just response times and response rates. For example, CSAT (customer satisfaction score) measures how happy people are with your product or service.
How socially satisfied are you with the customer service you’ve received?
The reason why brands ask customers to rate their experience with customer service agents after the interaction is over is so that they can measure customer satisfaction levels.
What is your satisfaction rating for the customer service you received?
To get your Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score, add up all the scores you’ve received and divide that number by the number of responses. Multiply that number by 100 to get your CSAT score as a percentage.
8. Net promoter score (NPS)
The net promoter score (NPS) is a metric that helps assesses customer loyalty.
NPS is better than CSAT at predicting future customer relationships because it is based on a single, well-phrased question.
Customers are asked to answer on a scale of zero to 10. Based on their response, each customer is grouped into one of three categories:
- Detractors: 0–6 score range
- Passives: 7–8 score range
- Promoters: 9–10 score range
NPS is stands out because it not only assesses customer satisfaction, but also the likelihood of future sales. That’s why it’s such a useful metric for companies of all sizes.
To calculate NPS, take the number of promoters and subtract the number of detractors.
NPS = (((Number of Promoters) – (Number of Detractors)) / (Total Number of Respondents)) * 100
9. Conversion rate
Conversion rate is a metric that measures how often your social content leads to a conversion event, such as a subscription, download, or sale. This metric is important because it shows the value of your social content in driving conversions.
If you want to track your social media conversions, you need to use UTM parameters.
To calculate your conversion rate, divide the number of conversions by the number of clicks.
Conversion rate benchmarks:
- Grocery: 6.8%
- Pharmaceuticals: 6.8%
- Health & beauty: 3.9%
- Travel & hospitality: 3.9%
- Home goods & furnishings: 2.8%
- Consumer electronics: 1.4%
- Luxury: 1.1%
- Automotive: 0.7%
- B2B: 0.6%
- Telecoms: 0.5%
- Media: 0.4%
- Financial services: 0.2%
- Energy: 0.1%
The average conversion rate for ecommerce stores is 2-3%. This means that, for every 100 visitors to your store, 2-3 of them will make a purchase.
10. Click-through rate (CTR)
The click-through rate is the percentage of people who click a link in your post to access additional content. That content could be anything from a blog post to your online store.
Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures the number of times people who see your social media content click on it to learn more about your product or service. A high CTR indicates that your social media content is effective in promoting your offering.
To calculate CTR, divide the total number of clicks on a post by the total number of times the post is seen. Multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
Advertisers should track the click-through rate (CTR) on both paid social ads and organic content to get a complete picture of how their campaigns are performing. Paid social ads have a higher CTR than organic content, but both should be monitored to get a full understanding of how customers are engaging with your brand.
11. Audience growth rate
The audience growth rate is a measure of how many new followers your brand gets on social media within a certain time period.
As your audience grows, you’ll need more and more new followers to maintain the same growth rate. A high growth rate on Instagram is not simply a measure of the number of new followers you have–instead, it is calculated by determining what percentage of your total audience is made up of new followers. So, when you are just starting out, even gaining 10 or 100 new followers can give you a high growth rate. However, as your audience size becomes larger, you will need an increasing number of new followers each month just to maintain the same growth rate percentage.
To calculate your audience growth rate, subtract your total audience at the beginning of the reporting period from your total audience at the end of the reporting period. Then divide that number by your total audience at the beginning of the reporting period and multiply by 100 to get your audience growth rate percentage.
How to measure social media marketing metrics? Final tips:
Following metrics related to your goals is what really matters.
If you collect data on your social media interactions and track it over time, you will be able to identify patterns that can help improve your online presence.
Tracking social media is the only way to improve and report your return on investment.
The more you know about your social media activities, the better decisions you can make.
Related posts:
