Track Your Social Media Performance: 6 Key Metrics to Gauge Success

We all know that social media is an essential marketing tool for businesses to reach their target audience. With billions of people globally using social media platforms every day, it's crucial to track the performance of your marketing strategy. In this blog, we'll explore six key metrics you should be monitoring to determine whether your social media marketing efforts are successful.

1. Reach

Reach refers to the number of unique individuals who have seen your content on social media. Unlike impressions, which measure the number of times your content has been viewed, reach purely measures the number of people your content has reached from your target audience.

2. Impressions

Impressions refer to the number of times your content has been viewed on social media. Impressions don’t necessarily equate to how many people have viewed your content, as a single user can view your content multiple times. For example, a social media post may have reached 1,000 users and has earned 2,000 impressions, meaning people have seen the post twice on average. Impressions, when paired with other metrics, can provide valuable insights into your brand's visibility.

3. Frequency

Frequency is determined using both reach and impressions. Frequency is the average number of times a user has seen your content within a specified period. If you divide impressions by the number of people reached, you will determine the frequency. If you have reached 2,000 people and have 10,000 impressions, then you would take 10,000 and divide that by 2,000, and then you get a frequency of 5, meaning that, on average, each person has seen your content five times. You don’t want your frequency to be too high, as people might start to disengage from your content. To avoid this, you can set a frequency cap on many paid platforms to ensure you don’t saturate your target audience.

4. Followers

Followers are individual users of platforms who have chosen to subscribe to your brand's updates on social media. Having followers is essential for building your brand's online presence and reaching a wider audience. Monitoring your follower count is an excellent way to gauge the growth of your social media presence and the impact of your marketing efforts. However, growth doesn’t always mean success. If you want to build followers, always look at your marketing objectives and align follower targets with those.

5. Engagement

Engagement refers to your audience's interaction with your content on social media. Engagements can come in the form of reactions, comments, shares, video views, clicks and more. The engagement metric is critical to your social media success as it provides insight into how your target audience responds to your content. High engagement rates indicate that your content resonates with your audience and is well-received, while low engagement rates could mean you’re missing the mark.

6. Sentiment

Sentiment refers to the emotional tone of your audience's engagement with your brand online. On social media platforms, you can look at the types of reactions and comments to help you understand positive, neutral or negative. Monitoring the sentiment of your audience's feedback is an excellent way to gauge the overall perception of your brand. Positive sentiment is great, but it’s important to address any negative feedback promptly. By monitoring sentiment, you can adjust your marketing strategy to help guide your messaging and develop a positive perception of your brand for your audience.

Tracking Metrics

By monitoring these metrics, you're not just gaining a basic understanding of your social media marketing performance, but you'll also feel more empowered to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy. To take this further, consider creating a reporting system to help you track these metrics and compare performance over time, enhancing your control over your social media marketing efforts.

However, don’t just take these metrics at face value. If something hasn’t worked well, then take the time to analyse and figure out if it’s the content or strategy itself. Also, take the time to define your goals for social media and each platform, as they all often have different uses and audiences. That way, you can ensure that you’re tracking the right metrics.

Hopefully, this article helps you feel more confident about tracking your social media performance. If you’re unsure about your own marketing strategy or could do with a helping hand, then get in touch.