Social media metrics help you measure the performance of your content.
Social Media Metrics: What to Measure across the Customer Journey
It's no longer enough to count the number of "likes" on your social media pages. Nowadays, brands need several key indicators to measure performance. Thankfully, there are several social media metrics to align across the customer journey. Let's take a look.
The Social Media Customer Journey
The common misconception about social media is that it’s only useful for brand awareness on the organic side or lead generation on the paid side. The truth is buyers may go through five different stages of the journey on social media, from awareness through advocacy, and there are helpful social media metrics we can use to track the performance of our goals during each of these.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the Customer Journey on Social Media
Awareness KPIs
Since this is the very first stage of the buyer journey, you’ll be looking at a few different social media metrics to determine your reach to new consumers.
On the organic side, this includes:
Likes
Impressions
Audience size
Share of voice
Video views
Autoplay video views
Photo or video post view clicks
On the paid social side, this includes:
Clicks
Video views
Cost per video view (CPV)
Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
Consideration KPIs
The second stage of the journey is where you want to generate demand from consumers. Here, you’ll likely be trying to show your audience the problems your brand or products solve, so the metrics are going to look a bit different.
On the organic side, this includes:
Shares
Comments
Saves
Engagement rate
Link clicks
Website clicks
Clickthrough rate (CTR)
Video thru-plays
Replay video views
On the paid side, this includes:
Clickthrough rate (CTR)
Cost per click (CPC)
Cost per video view (CPV)
Cost per lead (CPL)
Decision KPIs
By the decision stage, your primary goal is to drive conversions. You may be introducing brand offers and sales. There are a few different metrics to help you measure how well you’re doing.
On the organic side, this includes:
Link clicks
Page actions
Social traffic
Social conversions
On the paid side, this includes:
Conversion rate
Web conversions
Return on Ad Spend (RoAS)
Adoption KPIs
During the fourth stage, you’ll likely be educating customers with the goal of increasing engagement with your products and services. Again, there are unique metrics for this point in the social media buyer journey.
On the organic side, this includes:
Brand mentions
Average engagement
Brand or product sentiment
Reply rate
Reply time
On the paid side, this includes:
Conversion rate
Web conversions
Return on Ad Spend (RoAS)
Advocacy KPIs
Even though this is the final stage of the journey, this is where you’re actually trying to leverage happy customers to reach even more consumers by turning your biggest fans into sellers — or advocates. You can look at various social media metrics to measure this performance as well.
On the organic side, this includes:
Post engagement rate
Amount of user-generated content (UGC)
Percentage of impressions from advocates
On the paid side, this includes:
Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
Cost per video view (CPV)
Map Social Media Content to the Customer Journey
Now that you're familiar with the KPIs used to measure performance across social media, you can begin to match content to those metrics. Consider which types of content can deliver measurable results for each phase of the journey, and then monitor performance to see if you need to make refinements or adjustments along the way.
Get Help for Social Media Content
If mapping content to metrics and journeys feels overwhelming, then you may want to recruit someone to help you. There are many benefits to outsourcing your social media that can free up your time to focus on other areas of marketing.
