Measure your social media metrics to fit your goals.
A Beginner's Guide to Social Media Metrics
Social media metrics can become overwhelming if you don’t know what to look for. Before you dive in, you should know exactly what each metric is measuring.
Impressions
The first step to successful social media marketing is getting noticed in the sea of content. Impressions are an easy way to see exactly how many users you’re reaching. Most of the time this is unique views, but some metric tracking platforms will report on both total views and unique views.
Engagement
A link click, like, comment or share, any interaction with a post is considered an engagement. It’s the overarching goal on every social media platform. You want people engaged and interested in what you’re posting. Plain and simple, the engagement metric is going to show you how many times people have interacted with your post.
Engagement Rate
Engagement divided by Impressions. Engagement rate is a quick, surface level way to measure the success of any post. More often than not, your goal is going to be for others to engage with your post. Engagement rate brings to light the tough truth: if you’re getting a lot of impressions but no engagement you might need to rethink your content. Before you tear apart your whole strategy, know that successful engagement rates are lower than you think.
Less than 1% = low engagement rate
1% and 3.5% = average/good engagement rate
3.5% and 6% = high engagement rate
Potential Reach
This is a tool most social media metric tracking platforms offer. As stated in the name it measures the potential reach of a post, estimating the possible number of people who could see your post. This is helpful when determining what day/time is best for posting. Don’t overlook this! It’s an easy way to put yourself on the path to success.
Audience Growth Rate
A key to social media success is growth. The larger the audience the more impressions, engagement, link clicks, etc. In short, a follow is the highest form interest a user can show. Monitor this regularly. A successful audience growth rate is one that increases over time, or at the very least stays consistent. Similar to engagement rate, a successful audience growth rate is a lot lower than some may expect. 3% - 7% is a solid rate.
Knowledge of the metrics is the first step to measuring social media success, but that’s not all there is to it. When measuring metrics, it’s important to take into account the goal of your content. If you’re promoting a website, it may feel good to get likes, but the metric that matters is link clicks.
The success of your digital marketing is all about the data. We can help! RSO Consulting offers both organic and paid social media optimization services. Take a look.
