Social media metrics to track instead of likes

Likes are the most visible way to see if your social media marketing is successful, but they don’t present the whole picture. There are other metrics you should be tracking that are much more useful.

These metrics should be tied to your business goals and provide actionable insights to inform your marketing plans going forward. Relying on vanity metrics such as likes will not give you the information you need to improve your marketing or make a business case for it to your stakeholders.

Nico Eller, social media content creator at Axonn, said: “The key to success on social media is to engage, listen and build genuine relationships. Not to count likes and views.”

Why not just track likes?

A like is the most passive form of engagement there is. There’s no way to see whether the user read the whole post, took on any of the information or was compelled into action. A large number of likes doesn’t equate to increased sales, making likes an empty measure.

Metrics should be linked to tangible business goals like boosting engagement or improving conversions. They must be determined in advance of a campaign and checked regularly against consistent standards to monitor your social media progress.

Which metrics you should be tracking

It’s possible to track just about every element of your social media performance, so it’s important to narrow it down to the metrics that will be truly useful. These will be different for each organisation, depending on your overall aims.

Some of the most commonly and useful metrics you might want to obtain coherent information on are as follows:

Click-through rate

You want to know how many social media users are taking the next step and going from your post to a blog or the online shop on your website. This is called the click-through rate (CTR) and it shows you how effective your posts are, as they’re compelling people to take action.

Conversions

Marketing is all about feeding your sales funnel and tracking your conversion rate shows how healthy the beginning of this process is. A conversion event can be anything from a sale to a subscription or a download and you want to know how many of these events began with a social post.

Engagement

While likes are the minimum level of interaction on social platforms, when combined with other reactions, comments and shares, they make up the engagement metric. There are many ways to calculate engagement, with the one you choose reflecting your goals, but whichever you choose, it’s a worthwhile exercise.

Impressions

Measuring impressions means knowing how many people saw your content, but it’s easy to think that this is as empty a metric as likes. Impressions are a useful benchmark to measure other factors against and a useful place to start.

Video completion rate

Some metrics are specific to a certain type of content, such as video completion rate. Instead of just counting how many people started to watch your content, this metric lets you know the number that made it all the way through to the end. Holding your audience’s attention like that is a sign of good quality video marketing.

How to present a business case from social media metrics

Justifying your social media strategy to stakeholders is an important part of being a marketer in most businesses. You can’t argue with facts and figures, which makes data and reporting a crucial part of the process.

Tracking social media metrics will allow you to produce charts and reports that demonstrate your progress. Tying the results back to your business goals and KPIs is the most effective way to present a business case for the work you’re doing and its positive impact on the company.