The Top 3 Social Media Marketing Metrics You Need to Be Tracking
Wondering what social media marketing metrics you need to be tracking?
This post covers the top three marketing metrics you need to know, and how you can use them to make more strategic decisions about your digital marketing.
What Are Social Media Analytics?
Social media analytics is the data provided to you by social networks to help you understand areas like:
- The demographics of the people who follow you
- How many people see your posts
- Which posts are the most popular
- and more!
You can use this information to measure the results of your efforts, build brand awareness, and create scroll-stopping content that engages your target audience.
Every social media platform has its’ own insights or analytics tool built-in:
- Facebook: under the Insights tab on your Facebook Page
- Instagram: under the Insights tab for Business and Creator profiles
- Twitter: under the Twitter Analytics tab
- LinkedIn: offers basic data on your Company Page with a free account and full analytics with a premium account
- YouTube: found under the Analytics dashboard
- Pinterest: under the Analytics tab on for Business profiles
The Top 3 Social Media Marketing Metrics
Now that you know where to find your social media analytics, let’s take a look at the three most important marketing metrics you need to be tracking:
Reach
Reach refers to how many people are scrolling past your advertisement or post on social media. This is also sometimes referred to as Impressions. This number is often super high, but don’t get too excited - most people scroll or swipe right past posts without giving them a second thought, and a person usually needs to see a post or an ad seven times to recall what it was for. This is all before they’ve even made the decision to click through to learn more about what you’re selling.
Reach is important because it means people are seeing your posts, but this metric shouldn't be assessed on it’s own — we also need to measure it against our next metric: engagement.
Engagement
“Engagement” is how we measure whether our posts are creating meaningful, memorable experiences with our audience.
Social networks measure engagement when someone interacts with your post by taking an action, usually clicking on a link.
Comparing Engagement rates to Reach tells us how many people saw a post (or were “reached” by the post) and took the action we wanted them to take (or “engaged” with it.)
When measuring it, don’t just stick to looking at one social media platform - make sure your engagement strategy is being measured and tracked cross-channel and includes elements like email marketing, social media, and marketing automation.
Audience
Audiences are the most powerful way to understand who’s following your brand, and if your efforts are resonating with the right people.
Analytics tools like Facebook Business Centre or Google Analytics show a variety of data points about the people who follow your brand, like:
- Geographic locations
- Demographics like age and gender
- When they're most active online
- The keywords they use
- and more!
This data is useful day-to-day, but is especially important when building audiences to target with your social media and pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
An easy way to expand your audience is to target people who have similar interests to your existing target audience.
Ask yourself: what qualities do my customers have in common with people who choose my competitors? What can I do to speak to these similarities and convert them into customers for my business?
Considering audience overlap opens up your content to a much broader audience who are likely to be interested in what you’re selling.
Tracking Social Media Marketing Metrics
When you pay attention to these three key metrics in your social media analytics, you can understand your audience on a deeper level.
This allows you to create a more personal connection and develop a following that is actually invested in your brand, which makes for lifelong fans and followers.
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If you’re ready to start seeing better results from your digital marketing, drop us a line and let’s chat.
