In 2020, the average internet user spent 2 hours and 24 minutes per day on social media, showing why many businesses continue to focus their marketing efforts on their social media strategies. Although most business owners and marketers know that measuring the success of social media marketing efforts is essential, many don’t know where to start. There are a variety of metrics to consider, and sometimes it can be challenging knowing which ones are the most valuable and the best at measuring the performance of social media campaigns. In order to truly know which metrics you should track, you should first know what your goals are for your social media accounts. Your objective could be to increase brand awareness, engagement, customer service, or sales. After selecting your objective, you can decide which social media metrics to track. Here is a list of social media metrics that you should be tracking.
Website visits
Top Chicago web design agencies know that website visits are one of the most important metrics to track. You should always be tracking the number of people who visit your website through social media, especially if your website is where users can purchase your products or services, register for an event, signup for an email or blog subscription, or inquire to know more. Track this metric if you want to increase your brand awareness, leads, and eventually, sales. If your website isn’t receiving any traffic from your social media channels, it may be time to switch up your strategy. If you’d like even more traffic on your website from social media, then you may want to consider creating social media ads to allow people to visit your website directly.
Comments, likes, saves, shares, and more
Content on social media lives and dies by engagement. Tracking engagement on your social media channels should always be a priority. Engagement can include comments, likes, saves, shares, contest entries, bounce rate, time spent on site, replies, video views, and referral traffic. On Instagram, you can track your content interactions, which includes likes, comments, saves, shares, and Story interactions. On Facebook, you can track post clicks, reactions, comments, and shares. All of these things fall under the umbrella of engagement metrics.Tracking your engagement on social media can help you understand what content users like best, as well as dislike. Knowing this information allows you to cater your content to your target audience, and as a result, you’ll be able to work on increasing engagement.
User generated content
Although some may not view this as a typical metric, it does help to keep an eye on your user generated content. User generated content is content that is created by everyday users, instead of brands. It can be extremely beneficial because it provides free advertising for your company, leading to increased brand awareness, and hopefully, more sales. If you want to encourage your followers to post more user generated content, then you may want to ask them to post about your product or services with a specific branded hashtag. Other businesses choose to host giveaways and ask their followers to post publicly and tag their business for a chance to be entered into a giveaway. Tracking user generated content during campaigns such as these allows you to better understand how people feel about your brand.
Impressions and reach
Other metrics that you should consider tracking are impressions and reach. Impressions are the number of times your content is displayed to someone. Reach is the total number of unique people who view your content. Tracking both reach and impressions can help you to know how effective your content is by allowing you to view which posts have been shown to the highest number of people or seen the most number of times. Tracking reach and impressions on your social media accounts is important if your goal is to increase brand awareness. Oftentimes, it also helps to look at multiple metrics when tracking reach and impressions, since having both a high reach and impressions doesn’t necessarily mean that the engagement rate will be high as well.
Followers
If your goal is to increase your brand awareness, then you may want to track how many followers your accounts have. This social media metric has a bad reputation due to the fact that some accounts choose to purchase fake followers. If you choose to do this, remember that even though your number of followers may temporarily go up, it doesn’t necessarily mean that these fake followers will be loyal to your brand. Instead of purchasing fake followers, your objective should always be to increase authentic followers so that the people who regularly see your organic content can trust you and want to continue following you, as well as engage with your content. In the end, a large, loyal follower base on social media platforms can lead your company to receive more leads, and hopefully, sales.
Reviews
Although only a few social media platforms offer places to leave reviews, there are a few, such as Facebook and Yelp, that provide a place for users to leave their ratings. Tracking reviews on social media is important because it can lead to increased customer service and satisfaction, as well as spread brand awareness. Reviews have become an important factor in consumers’ purchasing decisions, with 92% of consumers using reviews to determine whether or not to make a purchase. Plus, tracking positive or negative reviews can motivate your business to change and grow.
Key takeaways
Tracking these 6 social media metrics allows your business to grow and fully understand your target audience online. Out of all of these metrics, make sure that you are always watching the number of visitors coming to your website from your social media channels. At the same time, don’t forget to track engagement metrics, user generated content, impressions and reach, and followers. All of these metrics can help you reach your company’s objectives. Lastly, remember to track any reviews you may receive on social media platforms since people typically read reviews before they make a purchasing decision. Following these metrics will allow your business to continue to grow with a successful social media strategy.
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