In order to determine the success of a campaign, you have to have a way to measure your outcome. Did your campaign meet your targeted goal(s)? Did you increase website traffic, followers or increase your revenue? Measuring and understanding your metrics is key in measuring the performance of your social media strategy. Below, I will break down why social media analytics and metrics are important, metrics matter, and the differences in metrics used in my personal and professional life.
What is social media analytics?
Social media analytics is the “process of tracking, collecting and analyzing data from social networks” (Hootsuite, 2021). Marketing teams can then use these analytics to better understand their company's social media performance, track key social media metrics, and generate social media reports to share with their team, stakeholders, and supervisors.
Why are social media analytics important?
The collected data from social media analytics allow businesses to generate reports where they can then analyze the reports and make business decisions. “The insights found through social media analytics can power every part of brand operations” (Netbase Quid, n.d.). Additionally, analytics allows businesses to understand what social strategies are working and which ones aren’t — overall, it creates better managed and cost-effective social media strategies that allow businesses to hit their smart goals and make more data-driven decisions in the future.
What are social media metrics?
Depending on each businesses’ social media goals is what will determine the types of metrics used to measure their outcome. “For every goal, you need a related metric, which will help determine if your social strategy is hitting the mark or not” (SproutSocial, 2021). Social media metrics determine the success and impact of your business decisions or how well your social strategy is performing.
There are ‘surface’ metrics such as likes, retweets, and shares, but there are also deeper data metrics that prove your business efforts have had a substantial impact and efficiently determine your ROI.
What social media metrics really matter?
Depending on your goals will depend on what metrics matter. The metrics used in my daily life, weekly for my immediate boss and monthly for my company’s management team, could overlap in some areas but can also be vastly different in others.
Hootsuite effectively breaks down metrics by focusing on the following key customer journey stages:
- Awareness: these metrics illuminate your current and potential audience. Within the awareness stage, the following metrics can be used: brand awareness and post reach. Brand awareness can be measured by focusing on shares, links, and impressions, while post reach can be measured by seeing how many people have seen your content since it was posted (Hootsuite, 2020).
- Engagement: these metrics show how audiences are interacting with your content. You can use the following metrics to determine your audience's interaction with your content: applause rate and average engagement rate. Applause Rate can be measured by looking at the number of approval actions such as likes and favorites compared to the total number of followers. The average engagement rate is the number of engagement actions such as likes, shares, and comments a post receives relative to your total number of followers (Hootsuite, 2020).
- Conversion: these metrics demonstrate the effectiveness of your social engagement. The conversion rate and click-through rate (CTR) are the two of the best ways to measure the effectiveness of your social engagement. “A high conversion rate means your content is valuable and compelling to the target audience” (Hootsuite, 2020). The CTW measures how many people engage in the call-to-action link in your content and will give you insight into how compelling your content is.
The metrics used weekly for my immediate boss and monthly for my company’s management team share similar goals and interests. However, metrics used daily for me differ and potentially scratch the surface.
In my daily life, I use simple metrics such as likes, comments, and shares to determine whether my social content is successful. While the metrics used weekly for my immediate boss and monthly for my company’s management team would include measuring our brand awareness, post reach, applause, and engagement rate, conversion rate, and click-through rate — all to determine whether our social campaigns are successful and whether we are budgeting properly.
Conclusion
In order to maximize their marketing budget, optimize their content, and meet their goals, businesses should utilize social media analytics and metrics to measure the success of their social media campaigns. There are many different ways to measure this success, and it depends on the social platforms businesses are utilizing and the goals they have set for their campaigns.
