Social media being an important channel for your business, its goals are what regulate your metrics. Social media metrics are essential as it measures your campaign successfully. It shows the performance of your social media strategy and you will see its impact on your whole business. So, social media professionals make use of social media metrics to track their work value that would impact the decisions made. On getting the right data, you will be assured that the ROI is paying off. Social media marketing metrics also help you to continue to make clever decisions and more data-driven decisions in the long run. Metrics for social media marketing is measured using its likes and shares it gets for its posts, the growth in its audience, and its followers.

In this article, let us discuss the most important social media marketing metrics. Before going into social media metrics, let us check where it resides in the social funnel. The funnel is divided into four main customer journey stages. Each stage has its measures. The following explains the stages:

1. Awareness

Social media metric brightens your existing and possible customers. The following are the awareness metrics that you could get.

• Brand Awareness – This denotes the devotion that your brand gets for an exact period across all the social media platforms. When it is taken for a specific period you will get the relevant data. Attention to your brand can be got from the following social media metrics:
  • Mentions
  • Shares
  • Likes
  • Impressions

Reporting periods also exist that include a week, month, or quarter.

• Audience Growth Rate – This measures the swiftness at which your brand’s followers are increasing on social media platforms. In short, it means how swiftly you get more followers. In this digital world, the brand’s social media followers also increase drastically. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Over a specific period, measure your net new followers across all the social media platforms where you have posted.
  • You can get the audience growth rate percentage using the following calculation

Audience Growth Rate Percentage = (Net new followers / Your overall audience of each of your social media platform) * 100 

• Post Reach – This denotes how many people have viewed your post when it has gone live. This social media marketing metric is easy to get and understand. It is actionable and it is dependable by the following parameters:
  1. Timing – as when is your audience online
  2. Content – what is valuable in your content 

You can track this metric using the following way:

• Potential Reach – This measures the number of people who could truthfully view a post during an exact reporting period. Meaning that, if one of your followers has shared your post to her social network, about 2 to 5 % of your followers would factor to your post potential reach. This is a significant social media metric for a social marketer because a social marketer always works on expanding the audience. When you know the potential reach, it would help you to measure your progress. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Make use of a brand monitoring tool that can be used to track your number of brand mentions.
  • Note down the number of followers who saw each of your mentions. 
  • Theoretical Reach = Total Number of Brand Mentions * Number of Followers who saw each of your mentions. This would be a rough estimate of the number of people who can see your brand mentions. This value is the theoretical reach, so your potential reach would be 2 to 5 % of your theoretical reach.

• Social Share Of Voice (SSoV) – This social media metric measures the number of people who mention your brand on social media platforms. Mentions can be either the following:
  1. Direct – This is indicated using @ symbol
  2. Indirect – This is indicated with just the name

This metric is used for competitive analysis as to how your brand is visible and relevant. You can track this metric using the following way:

• Measure each mention of your brand, both direct and indirect, across all the social media networks.
• Measure your competitor’s mentions in the same period.
• Add up both the measures
• SSoV Percentage = (Your Brand Mentions / Overall Total) * 100

2. Engagement

This social media engagement metric shows the way the audience interacts with your content. This metric also helps in increasing your engagement as well. The following are the social media engagement metrics that you could get:

• Applause Rate – This denotes the number of approval actions, for example, likes, favorites, that a post gets relative to the overall number of followers. When your follower likes or chooses one of your posts, the follower acknowledges it and finds it valuable. Being aware of the percentage of your audience would find value in your post. You can track social media engagement metrics by using this social media metric in the following way:
  • Add all the total approval actions that you get out of a post and the duration period.
  • Applause Rate Percentage = (Total Approval Actions / Total Followers) * 100

• Average Engagement Rate – This metric denotes the number of engagement actions such as shares, likes, and comments that a post gets relative to the total number of followers. This is an important social media metric because when you get higher engagement on your content it means your content resonates with the audience. You can check this out by tracking the engagement rate of each post. When there is a high engagement rate, it is immaterial about the actual number of shares, comments, and likes. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Add the posts total number of likes, comments, and shares
  • Average Engagement Rate Percent = (Total No. of likes, comments, and shares / Total Followers) * 100

• Amplification Rate – This metric denotes the ratio of shares per post to the total number of total followers. Essentially, when your amplification rate is higher, the more willing your followers would be to link themselves to your brand. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Add the total number of times that a post was shared, for example, repined, retweeted, reframe for a specific reporting period.
  • Amplification Rate Percentage = (Total Post Shares / Total Followers) * 100

• Virality Rate – This metric denotes the number of people who have shared your post against the total number of unique views it had during a specific period selected. This metric goes less than the surface and it is just about more than likes. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Measure the impressions on the post
  • Measure the shares on the post
  • Virality Rate Percentage = (Number of Shares / Number of Impressions) * 100

3. Conversion

This metric shows social engagement effectiveness. The following are the conversion metrics that you could get.

• Conversion Rate – This denotes the number of visitors who click on a link mentioned in your post and take action on the page. For example, it could be subscribing to a newsletter, download a file, etc. When this metric is high, it means that your content is valuable and fascinating to the target audience. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Create a post and place a call-to-action link. 
  • Have a cookie on the machine. This would link the lead to a campaign.
  • Make use of the campaign reporting to get the total clicks and conversions that the post generated.
  • Conversion Rate Percentage = (Conversions / Total Clicks) * 100

• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – This metric refers to the frequency of clicks that people make on the call-to-action post. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Measure the total number of clicks that your post’s link has.
  • Measure the total impressions that your post has.
  • CTR Percentage = (Total Clicks / Total Impressions) * 100

• Bounce Rate – This social media metric indicates the percentage of the page visitors who click on the link mentioned in your post and not take an action on it. This metric allows you to measure your social media traffic. This metric should show less that indicates that your social media campaigns target the right audience. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Enable Google Analytics.
  • Go to the ‘Acquisition’ tab and select ‘All Traffic’ – ‘Channels’ segment.
  • Click on the ‘Bounce Rate’ button. This would rank all the channels starting from the lowest bounce rate to the highest.

• Cost Per Click (CPC) – This metric is the amount that you pay for one click on your post. In whichever social media platforms, you post, measure its CPC as this would help you to pay attention to your investment. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Go to your platform’s ‘Ad Manager’.
  • Check this area often.
  • CPC – (Total Ad Spend / Total Measured Clicks) * 1000

• Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) – This metric is the amount that you pay each time a thousand people go past your post. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Go to your platform’s ‘Ad Manager’.
  • Check this area often.
  • CPM = (Total Ad Spend / Total Ad Impressions) * 100

4. Consumer

This metric reflects the way your customers think and feel about your brand. The following are the consumer metrics that you could get.

• Customer Testimonials – This social media metric refers to any customer assessment, review, comment, or endorsement related to a brand. Having great testimonials is good for your brand. When people get happier with your brand, customers would share their good experiences. To get more customer testimonials, try the following:
  • Request your good customer to leave a review
  • Execute a social media campaign where customers would write about your brand
  • Link to the form, Google My Business to enter testimonials 

• Customer Satisfaction (CSat) Score – This metric measures the way people are happy about your product or service. Using this metric asks a direct question asking customers to mention the overall satisfaction of your brand’s product or service. Customers would be asked to rate their satisfaction on a scale of very bad, bad, medium, good, very good. You can track this metric using the following way:
  • Create a survey form of CSAT on the social media platform.
  • Add all the sum of scores
  • CSAT = (Total Post Shares / Total Followers) * 100

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – This metric measures customer loyalty. NPS is good to predict future customer engagement. The question asked to the customers would be like, how likely you would recommend the product. Customers would be requested to reply on a scale of 0 to 10. Based on the response from the customers, each customer would be grouped into one of the following three categories:
  • Detractors of the score range are 0 to 6
  • Passives if the score range is 7 to 8
  • Promoters if the score range is 9 to 10

This is a unique metric as it measures customer satisfaction and future sales that are of great value for your brand. You can track this metric using the following way:

• Create a survey form of NPS on the social media platform.
• Subtract the no. of promoters from the no. of detractors.
• Net Promoter Score – ((Promoters – Detectors) / Total No. of Respondents) * 100

Conclusion

Metrics for social media marketing are important for your business presence online. Having a good social media metrics indicates that your business is doing overall well.