Important Social Media Metrics That Enterprises Must Track
As social media platforms continue to evolve and get deeper into our daily lives, it is necessary for businesses to invest in tracking social media metrics. While a business might have great social presence, it is important for the organisation to know if their social media strategy is reaching the correct audience and how is that audience engaging with the content. Only when customer engagement happens, can further sales and references happen.
Successful marketing requires tracking and analysing good customer data. Social media provides a wealth of information about customers. There are several helpful metrics that can be tracked using social media analytics which help organizations gauge the response to their marketing campaigns.
Why Social Media Metrics are Important
Social media metrics bring to light how the social strategy of an organisation is performing and its overall impact on the business. This is because social media generates visibility around social, ethical, environmental and political views and is also a great means of spreading educational material and knowledge. A majority of consumers rely on the information and reviews for any product found on social media. Research shows that 54% of users use social media to research products that they wish to buy.
This helps marketers to gather information about how a brand, product or company is being perceived. Their analysis helps organisations to better understand the requirements and expectations of customers, improve customer service, invest in smarter product development and improve their competitive edge.
Not all social media marketing gives the same outcome nor does every strategy spell success for an organisation.The only way to ensure that marketing campaigns are reaching their complete potential is to track their performance. Without measuring performance, everything becomes guess work and decisions can be taken based on a whim.
11 Important Social Media Metrics That Enterprises Must Track
Here’s the list of 11 important social media metrics that can be tracked. They are grouped into awareness metrics, engagement metrics and conversion metrics based on what consumer behaviour they are actually revealing.
Awareness Metrics
This group consists of all the metrics which connect current and potential audiences with the brand. These include:
- Brand Awareness
It refers to the number of people who are aware of the brand. In order to create awareness it is important to bear in mind that the posting schedule should be at regular intervals for a certain period of time. After this, the analytics can be applied to arrive at the number of clicks, likes, shares and so on during a given period.
- Post Reach
This metric refers to the number of people who have seen a post after it was released in the media. It demonstrates to what extent a marketing content is visible on social media.
- Audience Growth Rate
Audience growth measures the speed at which a brand’s following increases on social media. If there is a consistent increase in the growth rate over a certain number of months, it shows that the campaign is doing well. Comparing this data with similar data from the past will throw additional insights about the campaign.
- Social Share of Voice (SSoV)
It measures how many people are mentioning a brand on social media compared to its competitors. SSoV therefore gives an idea about the competitive position of an organisation in the market.
Engagement Metrics
These metrics provide information on how customers engage and interact with the marketing content.
- Average Engagement
The average engagement rate is the interaction level between the posts and the audience. It displays the number of engagement actions such as likes, shares or comments in relation to the total number of followers. If the rate is high that means that the engagement is high and that the audience can identify with the content.
- Amplification Rate
It refers to the percentage of the number of shares per post in relation to the total number of followers for a page.
- Virality Rate
Viraily rate is the ratio of the number of people who shared a post to the number of unique views during a given period.
Conversion Metrics
These metrics track the favourable actions taken by the audience and demonstrate the effectiveness of the marketing content.
- Conversion Rate
It is one of the most important metrics that organisations track. This is because it reveals information about how much revenue social media marketing is bringing in. The conversion rate refers to the number of people who take some kind of action on a company’s page such as subscribing to a newsletter, downloading an app, registering for an event, downloading some content, or by becoming a customer.
- Click Through Rate (CTR)
This metric reflects the number of people who click on the call to action links in posts and ads. The higher the CTR the more unique and compelling is the content.
- Bounce Rate
It refers to the number of people who land on the company page and then navigate away without taking action. Social media traffic can be measured this way and note the ROI being generated. A high bounce rate would indicate that the wrong audience is being addressed. The bounce rate is one of the most difficult metrics to understand and improve upon.
- Cost Per Click
Refers to the amount of money paid per click in any sponsored post. This metric helps to weigh if the investment in focus was worth it and enough.
All social media metrics should be viewed through the lens of the overall business goals of the company. The analytics need to be evaluated against the goals and then leverage this information to drive decisions about better brand positioning.
Find out how you can bring in the social media analytics advantage to your marketing efforts by calling our experts today!