Social Media Marketing Metrics for Your Brand (2023)

Social Media Marketing Metrics for Your Brand (1)Your social media pages have thousands of “likes” and followers. You think, “Awesome, this seems to be working.”

But sooner or later you think: “Why aren’t we getting more sign-ups on the website? Why are additional sales not coming in? Something must be wrong.”

You celebrated the vanity metrics only to realize they added no tangible value to the business.

If you use your social media analytics thoughtfully, they provide a peek into what your fans, followers, and customers are expecting from your business. With that information, you can learn:

  • Your audience’s likes and dislikes.
  • How many followers turn into website traffic.
  • How engaged your followers are with your pages and page posts.
  • The percentage of traffic that converts into your desired goal (e.g., sales).

Use #socialmedia metrics thoughtfully to see what people expect from your brand, says @mpochwat. Click To Tweet

Let’s dig into seven meaningful metrics that matter for most businesses.

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1. Social reach

One of the top metrics to track is reach – a measure of how many users your posts are reaching. The higher this number, the more exposure your content receives.

For example, look at the social reach of SEO expert Neil Patel on Twitter:

Social Media Marketing Metrics for Your Brand (2)

In the previous 24 hours, Neil reached over 600,000 accounts. This result is largely derived from his large number of social media followers (324,000) and effective video content.

Social Media Marketing Metrics for Your Brand (3)

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While reach cannot be your sole metric of success, it is an indicator of how well your accounts and content can attract new audience members. How do you measure and track it?

Analyze your campaign reach. How many people saw your content (e.g., Facebook ad campaign)? The more people that see your campaign, the higher the chance you will acquire new visitor traffic to your site.

Evaluate the reach of individual posts. How many people saw a post? You can learn which post resonates (and converts) better than another to help inform future posts.

These reach metrics are usually easily accessible on the insights page (or tab) of your social media profile. Here’s an example of how Instagram does it:

Social Media Marketing Metrics for Your Brand (4)

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2. Referrals

Determine how well your social media content leads people to your website by evaluating referral traffic.

Monitor referral traffic to see how social channels lead people to your website, says @mpochwat. Click To Tweet

Google Analytics is a great resource for tracking referrals. Go to Acquisition –> Social and observe which of your social media networks are driving traffic to your site and how they are converting.

Social Media Marketing Metrics for Your Brand (5)

To improve the referral traffic, create more engaging calls to action in your social media posts. Give them a reason to click.

Create more engaging CTAs in your #socialmedia to improve referral traffic, says @mpochwat. Click To Tweet

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3. Bounce rate

Users often visit your home page and never go further on your website. To see how frequently this happens, check your bounce rate metrics.

If your bounce rate is high from your social media traffic, you can see your visitors were interested in the social post – they clicked on a link – but the site content didn’t deliver – they quickly exited.

How do you measure and track bounce rate for social media? You likely are familiar with understanding the overall bounce rate to your site through Google Analytics:

Social Media Marketing Metrics for Your Brand (6)

To get into the bounce rate for social traffic, dig in further. Go to Acquisition > All Traffic, then segment by channels. For each social channel, look closely at the bounce rate. You can sort from high to low to understand which channels need attention more quickly.

How can you lower your bounce rate from social?

Ensure that your social media posts connect well to your website links. If you make a content promise on social and link to your blog, the article on your website better deliver. You also can offer more relevant content on your landing page to encourage the visitor to navigate to other pages on your site and add more engaging calls to action.

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4. Follower growth rate

Follower growth rate is another important metric to show if your content is resonating with people. It helps you determine whether you’re posting regularly enough to grow your audience and if your posts resonate well with your target audience.

Your follower growth rate is an important metric to see if your #social content is resonating, says @mpochwat. Click To Tweet

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How do you measure and track follower growth rate? Every social media platform displays your number of followers and the growth (or decline). Benchmark your audience and set up consistent intervals to measure it. For example, if you’re interested in the impact of individual posts, you’ll want to look at before and after numbers in the short term. But if you’re looking to understand the impact of a campaign, you would want to look at the difference in a longer term.

Social Media Marketing Metrics for Your Brand (7)

If your growth rate is sluggish, consider implementing some changes to post frequency, content topics, format, etc. For example, if you post text-image content, switch it up with a video. But remember, you can’t test everything at once or you won’t know what factor prompted a change in your growth.

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5. Engagement

Social media engagement shows how many people interact with your content. You may find that your audience engages more with an infographic than a text-based post. Or you could learn they prefer one topic more than another. All of that can inform your future content decisions.

A strong engagement rate indicates your brand is connecting well with your audience. While I noted in the beginning that “likes” are often vanity metrics, when they’re used appropriately – and combined with other engagement metrics – they can be helpful.

Analyze these engagement metrics:

  • Average engagement – number of “likes,” shares, comments across a set time (e.g., a week, a month).
  • Amplification rate – number of post shares divided by number of people who engaged with your post.
  • Virality rate – total number of shares divided by total number of views/reach multiplied by 100. For example, if 20 people shared a post that received 1,000 impressions, the virality rate would be 2% (anything over 1% indicates virality – the bigger the number the better.)

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6. Social media audience demographics

Don’t overlook your followers’ demographics – gender, income, age, education, location, etc. Explore how well these demographics match up to your buyer persona’s demographics. If they are aligned, you can see that your social content is relevant to your target audience. If they aren’t aligned, revise your content to be more interesting to your target audience (or evaluate whether that audience is still the right one).

You can use Facebook Audience Insights, Instagram Insights, or the insights of your preferred social media platform to break down all relevant demographics with ease.

Click to enlarge

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7. Fan base

People who promote your content or business on their social media platforms are your fans (i.e., your most loyal followers). Calculate your fan base by measuring how many people tag or mention your brand or share your content on social media.

Growing your fan base is different than growing your followers. While followers have some interest in your brand, fans are very interested. These top-tier followers are more likely to watch your video start to finish or to read a full blog post before they “like” or share them.

If you don’t have a big fan base, look at a competitor with a successful following to see what it’s doing on social. Recreate it but make it even better content.

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Dig deep with tools

These popular social media tools can help you gain deeper insights into your social media metrics:

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Get measuring

Social media can work wonders if you measure deliberately and regularly. Use these seven metrics to help you identify how to better your social content for a more successful content marketing program.

Has tracking these social metrics helped grow your business? Do you have a favorite tool to help with measurement? Please share in the comments.

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

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Get your social game on in person – and learn how to make it better online. Attend the world’s largest content marketing event Sept. 3-6. Register for Content Marketing World today and use code CMIBLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

FAQs

What are the most important metrics in social media marketing? ›

The most common and often important metrics to pay attention to are engagement, impressions and reach, share of voice, referrals and conversions and response rate and time. These combined will give you a 360º view of your social media performance.

What are metrics in social media marketing? ›

Social media metrics is the use of data to gauge the impact of social media activity on a company's revenue. Marketers often use social media monitoring software to observe activity on social platforms and gather information about how a brand, product or company-related topic is being perceived.

What are the top 3 social media marketing metrics to track in 2022? ›

Social media scheduling tool

Track the total number of followers. Discover different engagement metrics, including Facebook engagement metrics. Measure the click-through rate of your social posts. Track social traffic.

What are the 12 social media metrics? ›

12 Social Media Metrics to Track
  • Average Engagement Rate (AER) The average engagement rate on any social media platform is the interaction level between your posts and your audience. ...
  • Applause Rate. ...
  • Conversion Rate. ...
  • Brand Awareness. ...
  • Cost-Per-Click (CPC) ...
  • Click-Through-Rate (CTR) ...
  • Virality Rate. ...
  • Cost-Per-Mile.

What is the success metric of social media? ›

Conversion metrics refer to interactions on social media that a user converts from. These can include things like purchases, sign-ups or downloads. Conversions are usually the ultimate measure of success, as you can identify a clear return on investment from your social media activity.

Why are social media metrics important? ›

Social media metrics can provide very detailed information about your followers, your target audience, their social media habits, how they interact with you and your overall brand sentiment. Once you get your head around it, social media metrics can prove essential for creating an effective and in-depth strategy.

How do you measure success of social media marketing? ›

Monitor such information as: traffic volume metrics, such as the number of visits, page views and fans. engagement metrics, such as the number of comments, liked posts or favourited/shared tweets versus your page's total number of fans. competitive position (compare your engagement metrics to your competition's)

How do you measure effectiveness of social media marketing? ›

Retweets, likes, bookmarks and time spent watching your stories or videos can be monitored in real-time. To do this, you need to use social analytics software and web tools. You can also measure customer engagement using a specific formula: customer engagement = (amount of interactions/reach of posts) x 100.

How does social media measure brand awareness? ›

Tracking the number of social media followers is one of the most straightforward ways how to measure brand awareness: the more followers, the better your brand awareness is. In addition to the growth in social media follower base, keep a track on social media shares, likes, and comments.

What are the most important metrics to track in digital marketing? ›

Top Digital Marketing Metrics and KPIs
  • Web Traffic Sources.
  • Leads.
  • Page Views.
  • Cost per Lead.
  • Returning Visitors.
  • Conversion Rate.
  • Goal Completion Rate.
  • Click-Through Rate.

What are the marketing metrics? ›

Marketing metrics are a quantifiable way to track performance and are an important marketing measurement tool for gauging a campaign's effectiveness. The most appropriate marketing metrics vary greatly from one campaign to the next, but in general they measure the effects of your campaign on audience actions.

How do you use metrics to inform your strategy answer? ›

How to Use Metrics to Improve Performance
  1. List what you're currently measuring. Close ratios? ...
  2. Find a single additional area that you can measure. Could you use better data from your website? ...
  3. Track and review your measurements. ...
  4. Involve your team. ...
  5. Repeat the process.

Which of the following social media metrics is the most common and easiest to measure? ›

1. Volume. The first – and easiest – social media metric to measure is volume.

What are the 4 KPIs for social media? ›

That being said, there are four main areas your social media KPIs should be focusing on: engagement, reach, leads, and customers.

What social media metrics do you think are most important to track social media ROI? ›

The most important metrics to track depend on the goals of the campaign. For example, if a business is looking to increase brand awareness, then measures such as reach and engagement would be most important. If the goal is to generate leads or sales, then conversion rates and ROI would be more relevant.

What are the social metrics that contributes to a content getting viral on social media? ›

Awareness. You'll use awareness/reach metrics to figure out how your social media strategy is performing for your potential audience. Engagement. Engagement metrics will let you know if (and how) your audience is interacting with your social media content.

What are the five types of metrics? ›

We Will Cover The Following Business Metrics:
  • Sales Metrics.
  • Marketing Metrics.
  • Financial Metrics.
  • Human Resource Metrics.
  • Project Management Metrics.
  • Product Performance Metrics.
  • Other Important Business Metrics.
28 Feb 2020

What is the best way to measure social media engagement? ›

Engagement rate is a metric used to assess the average number of interactions your social media content receives per follower. Engagement rate is calculated as the total number of interactions your content receives divided by your total number of followers, multiplied by 100%.

How do you measure social media impressions? ›

How to Measure Impressions. Most platforms give you impression data directly on a post's analytics. On Instagram, for example, you can go to your profile and tap “Insights” to see your posts' impression data. To track all your impressions in one place, you can use a social media analytics tool like Keyhole.

What are the most important metrics to follow? ›

What are your Most Important Metrics?
  • Gross Revenue.
  • Net Revenue.
  • Profit Margin.
  • Conversion Rate.
  • Leads Generated.
  • Customer Retention Rate.
  • Website Traffic.
  • Cost-Per-Conversion.

What is a good social media engagement rate? ›

Most social media marketing experts agree that a good engagement rate is between 1% to 5%. The more followers you have, the harder it is to achieve. Hootsuite's own social media team reported an average Instagram engagement rate of 4.59% in 2022 with 177k followers.

What is an example of a metric? ›

Metric Units

Length: Millimeter (mm), Decimeter (dm), Centimeter (cm), Meter (m), and Kilometer (km) are used to measure how long or wide or tall an object is. Examples include measuring the thickness or length of a debit card, length of cloth, or distance between two cities.

What is KPI for social media? ›

What are social media KPIs? KPI stands for key performance indicators. Businesses use KPIs to determine performance over time, see if goals are being met and analyze whether changes need to be made. Social media KPIs are the metrics used to determine if a business's social media marketing strategy is effective.

Which social media KPI is most important? ›

Engagement is, hands down, the #1 area that you should be concerned with on social media. It is the catalyst for improvement in all of the other social media KPIs we'll discuss. Simply put, engagement measures the amount of likes, shares, and comments that your social updates receive.

How do you measure effectiveness of social media marketing? ›

Retweets, likes, bookmarks and time spent watching your stories or videos can be monitored in real-time. To do this, you need to use social analytics software and web tools. You can also measure customer engagement using a specific formula: customer engagement = (amount of interactions/reach of posts) x 100.

What are the five types of metrics? ›

We Will Cover The Following Business Metrics:
  • Sales Metrics.
  • Marketing Metrics.
  • Financial Metrics.
  • Human Resource Metrics.
  • Project Management Metrics.
  • Product Performance Metrics.
  • Other Important Business Metrics.
28 Feb 2020

What are social media KPIs examples? ›

The top KPIs for modern social media teams to track:
  • Likes.
  • Engagement.
  • Followers growth.
  • Traffic conversions.
  • Social interactions.
  • Social sentiment.
  • Social shares.
  • Web visitors by channel source.

Why are social media metrics important? ›

Social media metrics can provide very detailed information about your followers, your target audience, their social media habits, how they interact with you and your overall brand sentiment. Once you get your head around it, social media metrics can prove essential for creating an effective and in-depth strategy.

How does social media measure brand awareness? ›

Tracking the number of social media followers is one of the most straightforward ways how to measure brand awareness: the more followers, the better your brand awareness is. In addition to the growth in social media follower base, keep a track on social media shares, likes, and comments.

How do you use metrics to inform your strategy social media? ›

Top Social Media Metrics to Track
  1. Impressions. Impressions are the number of times your content is shown to users. ...
  2. Reach. Reach is the number of users who see your content, even if they see your content multiple times. ...
  3. Audience growth rate. ...
  4. Engagement rate. ...
  5. Click-through rate. ...
  6. Bounce rate. ...
  7. Average time on page. ...
  8. Referrals.
29 Aug 2021

What is an example of a metric? ›

Metric Units

Length: Millimeter (mm), Decimeter (dm), Centimeter (cm), Meter (m), and Kilometer (km) are used to measure how long or wide or tall an object is. Examples include measuring the thickness or length of a debit card, length of cloth, or distance between two cities.

How do you measure social media engagement? ›

Engagement rate is a metric used to assess the average number of interactions your social media content receives per follower. Engagement rate is calculated as the total number of interactions your content receives divided by your total number of followers, multiplied by 100%.

What are the 4 marketing metrics? ›

What Are The Most Important Marketing Metrics?
  • Return On Investment (ROI) ROI = customer lifetime value (CLV) – customer acquisition cost (CAC) ...
  • Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) MQLs are often a leading metric of prospective customer activity your marketing efforts directly influence. ...
  • Impressions.
12 Aug 2022

What are key marketing metrics? ›

Examples of key marketing metrics
  • Cost per acquisition (CPA) CPA is how much you spend to get one new customer. ...
  • Cost per lead (CPL) ...
  • Customer lifetime value (CLV) ...
  • Click-through rate (CTR) ...
  • Bounce rate. ...
  • Goal completions. ...
  • Lead-to-customer conversion rate. ...
  • Multi-touch attribution.
17 May 2022

What is an example of metrics for a business? ›

An example of a key business metric that applies to most businesses is sales revenue. In a B2C context, sales revenue is the income generated from all customer purchases minus the cost of returned or undeliverable items. Sales revenue is tied to such factors as advertising campaigns, price changes and seasonal changes.

Videos

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