So today we look beyond vanity metrics: followers, likes etc, to dig deeper into your effectiveness on social media. Vanity metrics make you feel good, but don't give you a clear idea of how you are really doing. If you want to take your business social media up a step or take a businesslike approach to how you use social media, you need more.
Some people love social media, some people hate it. The reality is these days, a social media presence for your business is a must. It’s a free tool to talk with potential and existing customers. Ignoring it means ignoring a huge pool of potential customers.
At the same time, it’s a total waste of your resources to post for the sake of posting- just because that’s what you think you should be doing. We’re all busy people, with families, social lives, and plenty of other things to be doing in our businesses. Alternatively, you could be paying a staff member, or a social media manager to post for your business, and you need to know if this is money well spent.
So included below are my favourite metrics for measuring success & effectiveness on social media, broken down into the consumer (or path to purchase) funnel. There are many different metrics to use, but these are ones that use easily accessible (& free!) data provided on each social media platform- I’ve also kept the list of metrics short.
Before you begin you should take a wander (if you haven’t already) through the insights section of Facebook (see screenshot below) and Instagram (swipe left from your profile page and click on insights) to familiarize yourself. Any questions, just message me through the Facebook page.
You can also compare some of the metrics to your competitors. If you are interested in doing this, you could choose any number up to 10 businesses to watch on social media- any more than that is just too time consuming. Keep in mind your competitors may be spending money on social media advertising which will impact some metrics. To keep going further, there is also publicly available benchmarking figures online for you to compare how you’re doing with your business sector, on a global scale! Cool right? Honestly, we could just get lost in numbers for days. But let’s not. It’s Friday and we’ve all got places to be.
Finally, you need to have a set reporting period. That is a period of time that you are looking at and comparing with previous. Monthly or quarterly works for many businesses. This is the perfect time to stop, pull down some figures and see how you’ve been doing. It’ll also tell you how to do better in the future.
Awareness:
These metrics tell you about how big your audience and how many people see your posts. How many people are seeing your business or brand on each platform.
Audience growth rate:
If you post regularly you may notice your audience growing, but how fast is it growing? How fast is it growing compared to your competitors? You can track your competitors’ progress the same way- if your competitors audience growth rate is hugely different to your (much larger) it could mean they are paying to promote their pages.
How to get your audience growth rate percentage:
1. Measure your net (the number you have at the end of your reporting period. You will gain some and lose some over time) new followers (on each platform) over a reporting period.
2. Divide your net new followers by your total audience (on each platform) and multiply by 100 to get your audience growth rate percentage.
Post reach
This metric is how many people or how many accounts have been reached by a post since you put it up; it’s a metrics that’s easy to find & easy to understand. It’s also one of the easiest metrics to improve as it has a lot to do with when and what you post! If you look back at your old posts you can see the ones that get the most likes, you’ll see the ones that get the fewest. Facebook and Instagram will also tell you when your audience is online- so to get the best reach, consider when and what you are posting.
How to get your post reach percentage:
1. Measure the reach of your chosen post (Facebook : go to insights, choose posts from the menu on the left. Instagram (Go to insights, click see all next to feed posts, and click on the image you want- then click on 'view insights' below the image.
2. Divide the reach number by your total followers then multiply by 100.
Engagement:
These metrics show how audiences are interacting with your content.
Applause Rate
This is the number of approval actions (e.g., likes, favorites) a post receives relative to your total number of followers. While likes are vanity measures, and not a great indicator of social media effectiveness, it can be valuable in finding out what posts your audience appreciate the most. You can use this knowledge to choose better content going forward.
How to track your post applause rate:
1. Add up the total approval actions a post received over the course of a reporting period.
2. Divide that number by your total followers, then multiply by 100.
Average Engagement Rate
Average Engagement Rate is the number of engagement actions (e.g., likes, shares, comments) a post receives relative to your total number of followers.
It’s an important metric because higher engagement means your audience is enjoying your content- and in an age with engagement on social media is decreasing, it's hard work to get great engagement. To see how your audience really likes your content, track the engagement rate of every post. If you have a high engagement rate, the actual number of likes and shares and comments is irrelevant.
How to get your engagement rate:
1. Add up a post’s total likes, comments, and shares.
2. Divide by your total number of followers, then multiply by 100
Note: The benchmark (point of reference against which you can compare your figures) for this metric is different on every platform. Facebook and Twitter generally have lower engagement rates (e.g., 0.5% to 1%). Instagram, on the other hand usually has a higher engagement rate (e.g., 3% to 6%).
Conversion:
These metrics will show you how effective your engagement is. Without spending money on advertising to get cost-per click figures, the easiest metric to get is the Click-through rate.
Click-Through Rate/ CTR,
This metric is how often people click on the call-to-action link in your post. What’s a call to action? A call to action is when you include something in your post that you need your audience to do something- a link or a button to click on, that will take them somewhere or do something rather than just look at the post. If you like to include specials & offers, or links for promos on your website, you will get a great look into how attractive your audience is finding these posts.
How to measure your click-through rate
1. From your insights, go to the posts section and click on a post with a link or call to action button (call me, message me or email me). Measure the total clicks on a post’s link.
2. Measure the total impressions (the number of times your content is displayed, no matter if it was clicked or not) on that post. On Facebook: go to insights click on Posts- make sure you click on the drop down button next to reach and choose impressions (reach and impressions are not the same thing). On Instagram: swipe from your profile, click on insights, click on “see all” next to feed posts, click a post with a link and click view insights below the image.
3. Divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions, then multiply by 100
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