There are a lot of metrics involved in social media, and it can be overwhelming. In addition, new metrics seem to be created all the time.

What are some metrics that every company should track? What are some key metrics that you should stay on top of?

What are social media metrics and why should you track them?

The metrics you choose to track for your social media goals should be related to those goals. This way, you can tell if your social media strategy is effective in achieving those goals.

For example, if your business goal is to increase conversions, your social media goal becomes increasing conversions from those that visit your site. You can use ads, product tags, and influencers to help reach this goal. You can measure success by looking at the social traffic and conversion rate metric from those posts in your website analytics.

It is important to measure metrics on social media to show the success of a campaign, how good the social media strategy is, and if it will have an effect on the business. This data can be used to demonstrate the impact of work to those in charge, which may lead to more money and resources for the social media team. Additionally, metrics can help show the general profile and brand health, which may not be apparent without the data.

Engagement: Likes, comments, shares, and clicks

Engagement is a big umbrella category to track.

The engagement rate measures how often people interact with your content, including things like “likes,” comments, and social sharing. This metric is often used to see how effective your brand campaigns are and how interested your audience is in your content.

Delta Media monitors a variety of engagement metrics to make sure that we are providing our clients with the most accurate representation of their social media success. The engagement of an audience with a social media account can be measured by looking at the interactions between the account and the audience. This can include likes, comments, and shares.

A high engagement rate indicates that your audience is responsive to your content and that you have a good number of “real” followers. It also suggests that you are posting interesting content and that you are aware of your brand.

At the granular level, you’ll look at different engagement metrics:

Likes, Comments, Retweets, etc.: Individual engagement metrics like a Share or a Retweet add up. In a Twitter report, you’ll see a total number of engagements per post or profile.
Post engagement rate: The number of engagements divided by impressions or reach. A high rate means the people who see the post find it interesting.
Account mentions: Organic mentions, like @mentions that aren’t part of a reply, or tagging a brand in an Instagram story without prompting, indicate good brand awareness.

You need to look at more than one metric to get a full understanding of how well something is performing. For example, if a post gets a lot of likes but not comments or shares, that might not be bad if the post was just meant to present a beautiful image. If there was a call to action that encouraged comments and shares, though, then the lack of them could mean a poorly performing caption.

Awareness: Impressions & reach

The term “reach” refers to the number of people who see your content. It’s a good idea to keep track of your average reach, as well as the reach of each individual post, story, or video.

A good metric to measure is the percentage of your reach that is made up of followers vs. non-followers. If a lot of non-followers are seeing your content, it means it is being shared or doing well in the algorithms, or both.

The number of impressions indicates how many times people saw your content. It can be higher than reach, because the same person might look at your content more than once.

An especially high level of impressions compared to reach means people are looking at a post multiple times. Try to understand why it’s so popular by doing some research.

Audience growth rate

The amount of new followers your brand gets on social media within a certain amount of time is what is known as your audience growth rate.

But if you already have 100,000 followers, 10,000 new followers is only a 1% growth rate. It’s not just a matter of taking stock of your new followers. Instead, it’s a question of your new followers as a percentage of your overall audience. So when you’re just starting out, getting 10 or 100 new followers in a month can give you a high growth rate. But if you already have 100,000 followers, 10,000 new followers is only a 1% growth rate.

But if you already have a large audience, you will need more new followers to keep that momentum going.

To find your audience growth rate, track how many new followers you gain on each platform over a set period of time. divide that number by your total number of followers on each platform, then multiply by 100.

Social share of voice (SSoV)

How much of the social conversation in your industry is all about you in comparison to your competitors?

Mentions can be either:

Direct (tagged—e.g., “@Brand”)
Indirect (untagged—e.g., “brand”)

SSoV is a way of measuring how visible your brand is in the market. The more visible your brand is, the more likely it is to be relevant to customers.

To calculate your brand’s SSoV, add up every mention of your brand on social media. Do the same for your competitors. Add both sets of mentions together to get a total number of mentions for your industry. Divide your brand mentions by the industry total, then multiply by 100 to get your SSoV as a percentage.

Social sentiment

When people talk about you online, are they saying positive or negative things? Social sentiment tracks the feelings and attitudes behind the conversation to give you an idea of how people feel about you.

You will need analytics tools to help you process and categorize language and context in order to calculate social sentiment.

Video completion rate

This is a good indicator that your content is of high quality and resonates with your audience if people are watching your videos all the way through to the end.

Video completion rate is a key factor in many social media algorithms, so it is a good idea to focus on improving it!

ROI: Referrals & conversions

An important social metric that is most applicable for companies with websites or e-commerce platforms is social referral traffic and conversions. These are tied to both sales and marketing goals, and ultimately major business goals. In order to track these, you will need a publishing strategy that incorporates UTM tracking and a website traffic analytics program like Google Analytics or a built-in one if you are using an e-commerce platform like Shopify.

A referral is when a user comes to your website from another website. In web analytics, referrals are broken down by source. “Social” is usually the source/medium you’ll be monitoring, and then it’s broken down by network.

This means that someone visited your site through a social media channel and then purchased something while they were on your site.

The click-through rate is the number of times someone clicks on your content compared to the number of impressions you get. A high click-through rate means an effective ad. Some common examples of areas where CTR is measured include:

Email links and call-to-action buttons
PPC advertisements
Links on landing pages
Social media advertising
On-site elements (buttons, images, etc)

It is recommended that you research industry benchmarks before creating your ad, and then monitor your ad’s analytics and performance to make necessary changes.

Cost-per-click (CPC)

In online advertising, cost-per-click (CPC) is a pricing model where advertisers pay a set amount of money for each click on their ads.

The lifetime value of a customer, or the average order value, will help you understand how much each customer is worth to your business.

A higher lifetime value of a customer means that, on average, each customer is worth more to your business. A high conversion rate means that a higher percentage of visitors to your website take the desired action. If you have a high lifetime value for your customers and a high conversion rate, you can afford to spend more per click to get visitors to your website.

The CPC can be found in the analytics for the social network where the ad is being run. There is no need to calculate it.

Cost per click benchmarks:

Q1 2021: $0.52

Q2 2021: $0.60

Q3 2021: $0.71

Q4 2021: $0.70

Q1 2022: $0.62

These benchmarks come from search advertising, and the numbers give a good impression of how CPC is trending.

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)

Cost per thousand impressions is the cost you pay for your social media ad to be seen by one thousand people.

CPM is all about views, not actions.

Once again, there is no need for calculations, simply import the data from your social network’s analytics.

CPM benchmarks:

Q1 2021: $5.87

Q2 2021: $7.21

Q3 2021: $7.62

Q4 2021: $8.86

Q1 2022: $6.75

Amplification rate

The amplification rate is the ratio of the number of shares per post to the number of overall followers.

Amplification is the rate at which people who see your content share it with their own networks.

This means that if you have a high amplification rate, your followers are helping you reach more people.

The amplification rate is the percentage of a post’s total number of shares divided by the total number of followers.

Virality rate

The virality rate measures how often your content is shared as a percentage of impressions.

Virality rate measures how your content is being shared by others and how often it is being seen by new people.

To calculate the virality rate, divide a post’s number of shares by its impressions and multiply by 100 to get the virality rate as a percentage.

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score

If you want to improve your customer service, start with your CSAT score. The way to improve customer service is not simply by response times or response rates, but rather by the customer satisfaction score. The customer satisfaction score is a metric that measures happiness with a product or service. If you want to improve customer service, begin by focusing on the customer satisfaction score.

One, straightforward question is used to measure the level of satisfaction with your social customer service.

Many brands ask customers to rate their customer service experience after it is over in order to measure satisfaction.

Asking your customers to rate their satisfaction with your customer service is a great way to use bots.

CSAT score is calculated by taking the sum of all responses and dividing it by the number of responses. To get the CSAT score as a percentage, multiply the quotient by 100.

Net promoter score (NPS)

The NPS metric measures how likely your customers are to recommend your business to others.

The Net Promoter Score, or NPS, is more accurate than the CSAT score in predicting future customer relationships. The NPS is based on a single question: How likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?

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

The National Park Service (NPS) is known for measuring customer satisfaction and potential for future sales. This makes it a valuable metric for organizations of all sizes.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is calculated by subtracting the number or promoters from the number of detractors. The result is divided by the total number of respondents and multiplied by 100 to give the score.

Conclusion

We compiled a list of the most essential social media metrics that matter for most businesses and most goals. Metrics are important because they show how successful a campaign or strategy is over time.

Some of the most common and important metrics to focus on are engagement, impressions and reach, the share of voice, referrals and conversions, and response rate and time. Having all of this information will give you a complete view of your social media performance. As your goals change over time, you’ll add new, more specific metrics to make them more relevant to your business.