Is social media effective for your brand? Can you measure that performance? Or is it a guessing game?
More than half of the world now uses social media. Over 346 million are new users, having joined in the past twelve months. And over 5 billion mobile users actively engage on social platforms.
It’s clear that the likes of Facebook and Instagram offer perfect marketing opportunities. But how do you measure that success?
This article looks at social media key performance indicators or KPIs.
KPI metrics offer a way to accurately measure how effective your marketing strategy is. Social media KPIs focus on users and followers and how they interact with your pages.
If you want to know what marketing indicators to focus on then read on.
We cover the top 7 KPI marketing metrics including impressions, likes, and shares. And you’ll discover why some indicators are more useful than others.
One of the easiest indicators to measure is your follower count.
This metric is available on all social media platforms and you can track it over time. But does a high follower count always equal a successful marketing campaign?
A better KPI tracking metric is active followers – those followers who actively engage with your pages.
You need to weed out spam and fake accounts as they will skew your results. To help with this, use tools like Who.Unfollowed.Me to see who joined your list and who left.
That service is specific to Twitter so for Instagram users, install the FollowMeter app for iOS and Android.
FollowMeter tracks a range of metrics about your IG account including new followers and unfollowers. It provides a simple percentage and color dashboard which indicates how popular you are. Blue is bad, red is great.
Impressions quantify how many times your social media posts appear in news feeds or timelines. They can come from your followers or friends of your followers and show that they saw your content.
It’s one of those tricky KPI metrics to decipher because a user may not actually read your post. But even if it is vague, it provides an estimate of how many people could connect with your business brand.
Social media KPIs analytics apps like Sprout Social categorize impressions into platforms. You can see how many times your post was listed on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. using their Group Impressions screen.
Likes promote a positive experience; something a person enjoys and wants to share.
The more likes your posts receive the higher the engagement online. They also give your content authority and have a higher rate of success when it comes to interaction.
However, don’t hang your hat on total likes.
Many users automatically tap the Like button as a way to show everyone how engaged they are online. But not necessarily with your product.
Often it’s a popularity contest on social media and liking something boosts the ego and not always brand perception. What’s more important are positive comments.
Social media is all about engagement.
Unlike traditional advertising which says ‘sit there and watch’, social media encourages interaction. And one of the best signs that content is well received is a positive comment.
Facebook actually uses comment counts in its algorithm by promoting commented content. It places those posts higher in users’ feeds when it sees a high level of engagement.
Soon, Facebook will launch a Comment Insights feature which shows how positive your comments are.
It will encourage people to stay upbeat because those comments help lift the community. And that will impact your brand if it carries a positive message.
Comments don’t have to be restricted to the written word either.
Instagram Stories creates a highlight reel of the past 24 hours’ worth of images and videos from your profile. Users can write a comment or post their own images in response. They can also video themselves reacting and often share it with their friends.
Shares, retweets, and re-vines, etc. evidence engagement with your marketing, just like comments. The more your message is passed on the better the response will be.
One tip here is to make your posts and tweets accessible from everywhere, especially your website.
Add social media buttons to your blog and product pages. Make it easy for people to share and repost your content. Then you can track that response.
Likes are good. Comments are better. Clicks are great. But ultimately you want conversions.
Leads or sales conversions offer the ‘bottom line’ KPI in terms of success.
You can measure exactly how effective a marketing campaign is through these CTAs. Goals like inquiry forms, newsletter sign-ups, and online buys offer black-and-white evidence.
Clicks to your website landing pages provide a clear KPI to measure the success of your social media posts.
From there you can measure bounce rates or how long the user remains on the page. A high bounce rate indicates a poor link between the content of your post and your website. So make sure to match the topics in both.
Lots of clicks but few likes or shares says that your post grabbed them but didn’t deliver.
In this article we’ve looked at the top social media key performance indicators you need to measure.
The goal is to convert conversation into sales. And to do that you need the very best in social media marketing.
WGNR offers compelling content and social media marketing services.
We create content with substance. Something that is education, entertaining, and inspiring. It aligns with your brand to promote a strong message to your audience. And we help track its success when it’s published.
Contact us today for a fast yet quality social media service.
Our creative content production studio is ready to bring your ideas to life within minutes. And the KPIs will speak for themselves.
Let’s discuss your current goals and objectives and discover how to best support your needs.
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