Social Media Metrics That Really Matter

Numbers are the universal language, especially for marketers. There’s no other way to identify the ROI of your department. Now, when you have set the goals for your social media marketing strategy, it’s time to think further. It’s important how you’ll implement them and measure the success of your campaigns. Social media metrics will help you see how the results of your work tie to your goals. But don’t be misguided. Likes and shares aren’t your main numbers to monitor. There are more important social media metrics that matter. It depends on where your customer is in the buying journey. In this guide, we’ll introduce you to eleven critical metrics.

How to Measure Social Media Success
Awareness Metrics
Engagement Metrics
Conversion Metrics
Tracking Social Media Metrics Has Never Been Easier

There are different ways to measure social media performance metrics. But there’s one universal and relevant way. Track specific numbers as they relate to the top stages of the funnel:

1. Awareness reflects all the metrics that connect your current and potential audience with your brand.
2. Engagement combines numbers, illuminating how audiences engage or interact with your content.
3. Conversion, in turn, is a way to demonstrate how effective and persuasive your content strategy on social media really is.

It largely depends on social media algorithms and your activity. If the leads will get to know your brand, engage with you, or convert. PromoRepublic gives you access to thousands of post ideas, visuals, and templates. To generate more compelling content, sign up for a free trial below:

Awareness Metrics

Awareness banks on metrics that entail the number of your followers and the number of impressions from your posts.

1. Brand Awareness

Brand Awareness is all the attention and understanding your brand gets from the audience on social media. It will be easier to discover your brand if you stick to a social media posting schedule and publish consistently.

Do it for a certain period of time (a week, a month, or a quarter). Then, you can start creating analytical reports based on data you collected on your business pages. First off, you can consider @mentions, shares, links, and expressions during a reporting period.

Generally, there are three things you can do to measure social media marketing success. Based on brand awareness, consider the following:

1. Identify the attention metrics that you will track, tied to your goals, further connected with brand awareness.
2. Decide on the reporting period during which you’ll be collecting the above information.
3. Track, figure out the trends, and improve on the data you get.

You can use PromoRepublic to track brand mentions on six social media channels.

2. Post Reach

Post Reach refers to the number of people who have seen a post since its publication.

Based on post reach, you can make actionable assumptions. Specifically, figuring out the perfect timing and the type of content you publish. This metric encourages you to answer two questions correctly:

When is my audience the most active during the day?
What are my audience’s favorite topics?

To measure post reach, analyze any post you have. Divide the reach by the total number of followers to your page and multiply by 100. You’ll get a percent signifying how well your posts are performing on social.

Use PromoRepublic’s tool to post when your audience is the most active to get a higher result.

3. Audience Growth Rate

Audience Growth Rate is a metric that evaluates how fast your number of followers increases on social media. In simple terms, it reflects how quickly you gain followers during a certain period of time.

The best way to discover if Audience Growth Rate increases, is to compare it with a reporting period from the past. You’ll need to have solid data with a proven time record to measure your social media performance based on this metric.

This approach to numbers in marketing shifts from the actual number of followers you get. You should rather ask yourself how fast you managed to gain them.

The formula anticipates dividing new followers by your total audience and multiplying by 100.

Social Share of Voice is another measurement. It reveals how many people have mentioned your brand on social media, directly or indirectly. But this time all the data should be compared to your competitors.

SSoV is supposed to tell you about your competitive position in the market. Measuring social media success, in this case, is not rocket science.

Count your mentions, your competitor’s mentions, and get the total of both. After that, divide your brand mentions by the total you received previously and multiply by 100.

Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics are one of the most interesting and easiest numbers to track. They demonstrate what people do to interact with your content. This can be displayed in the form of likes, shares, and comments.

5. Average Engagement Rate

Average Engagement Rate is one more metric for social media success. It displays the number of engagement actions, usually represented as likes, shares, or comments, in relation to your total number of followers.

LinkedIn and Facebook, for example, show you the engagement rate immediately. You don’t have to zoom in to the actual numbers of likes or shares. If the engagement rate is high, your content resonates with the audience, which is a super good sign.

If you still need to do the calculation, total the actions under your posts and divide it by your total number of followers. Don’t forget to multiply by 100 to get the actual percent.

6. Amplification Rate

Amplification Rate is the percentage reflecting the number of shares per single post relative to the number of page followers.

Wondering how to track social media metrics of this kind? Calculate how many times your post was shared. Divide it by the number of your entire follower base. Further multiply it by 100 to get the percentage.

7. Virality Rate

In turn, the Virality Rate is calculated taking into account the number of people who shared your post and the number of unique views impressions during a certain period of time that gets measured.

To measure Virality Rate, there are three steps to take. Consider measuring impressions and post’s shares respectively and do the calculation. To get the percentage, just divide the number of shares by the number of impressions and then do the multiplication as in all the cases mentioned above.

Conversion Metrics

Getting a high conversion rate from social media is a dream of every marketer. It would definitely mean that social media meets business expectations. However, being the most important social media metrics, this rate is the hardest to get. In fact, it needs a higher-level view of the campaign, as compared to other metrics.

8. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate includes metrics for social media success that measures the effectiveness of social media engagement. In simple words, you should track the number of visitors who come from your social media pages. Take a look at how many people sign up on the form, become subscribers or clients. Whatever is your goal. To get the number, just divide conversions by total clicks and multiply by 100.

To become measurable, the Conversion Rate usually requires more actions than the metrics above. It’s advisable to make a link with a call-to-action trackable before you publish the post, to be able to see where the visitors come from.

9. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-Through Rate, or CTR, is one of the most popular metrics used by marketers to measure success of their posts. It shows how often people actually click on your posts to go to your website, for example. The higher the CTR, the more unique and compelling is the content you produce. You can confidently say that you write actionable posts.

Social media networks like Facebook and LinkedIn provide a CTR to every post, so you won’t need to bother about measuring it yourself. But if that is the case and you want to do it yourself, just divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions. After multiplying by 100, you have your CTR right there.

10. Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate shapes the percentage of visitors who click on a link in your post and immediately discontinue their journey leaving the page. A high bounce rate would mean that people don’t take any additional actions, landing on your website, which is a good warning sign that you might be speaking to the wrong audience.

In fact, you can compare Bounce Rates from visitors who come from different social channels and make assumptions regarding your next steps, depending on the number. It will help you answer the question of whether you’re targeting the right audience with each. Bounce Rate is also the only social media metrics to track and keep at a lower percentage. To measure it manually, you’ll need access to Google Analytics and its Acquisition tab.

11. Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

Cost-Per-Click is a term in paid advertising and the number aiming to measure social media marketing success from a paid campaign, for example. Basically, it’s the amount of money you pay for a click in any sponsored post you should track all the time after creating advertisements on social. It’s better not to leave it unattended, as it can change depending on the social networks you’re using to promote content.

Measuring social media performance metrics seems like a daunting task, as there are lots of numbers to track and improve upon. But today, social media business pages have extended analytics reports. They allow you to see how everything’s growing or decreasing. Analytical reports focus on almost every point in the above list. Often times, you won’t need to make calculations yourself. But it’s still good to be equipped with the knowledge where comes what. What social media metrics are your guiding light? Which ones do you use to measure the ROI of your marketing efforts? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

Social Media Metrics That Really Matter