How do you select social media metrics?

1 Align your metrics with your objectives

The first step to selecting social media metrics is to define your objectives. What are you trying to achieve with your social media presence? Do you want to raise awareness, generate leads, increase engagement, or drive sales? Depending on your objectives, you will need different metrics to measure your success. For example, if your objective is to raise awareness, you might focus on metrics like reach, impressions, and followers. If your objective is to generate leads, you might focus on metrics like clicks, conversions, and cost per lead.

2 Choose metrics that reflect your audience's behavior

The second step to selecting social media metrics is to understand your audience's behavior. How do they interact with your content, your brand, and your competitors? How do they move along the customer journey? How do they respond to your calls to action? By analyzing your audience's behavior, you can choose metrics that reflect their actions and reactions. For example, if you want to measure how your audience engages with your content, you might look at metrics like likes, comments, shares, and mentions. If you want to measure how your audience converts into customers, you might look at metrics like sales, revenue, and customer lifetime value.

3 Use metrics that are consistent and comparable

The third step to selecting social media metrics is to use metrics that are consistent and comparable. This means that you should use the same metrics across different platforms, campaigns, and time periods. This will help you compare your performance and identify trends and patterns. It will also help you avoid confusion and inconsistency caused by different definitions and calculations of metrics. For example, you should use the same metric to measure reach on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You should also use the same metric to measure engagement on different types of content, such as videos, images, and text.

4 Balance quantitative and qualitative metrics

The fourth step to selecting social media metrics is to balance quantitative and qualitative metrics. Quantitative metrics are numerical and measurable, such as views, clicks, and conversions. Qualitative metrics are descriptive and subjective, such as sentiment, feedback, and satisfaction. Both types of metrics are important and complementary, as they provide different insights and perspectives. Quantitative metrics can tell you what happened, but qualitative metrics can tell you why it happened. For example, you can use quantitative metrics to measure how many people watched your video, but you can use qualitative metrics to measure how they felt about it.

5 Focus on the metrics that matter

The final step to selecting social media metrics is to focus on the metrics that matter. This means that you should prioritize the metrics that align with your objectives, reflect your audience's behavior, are consistent and comparable, and balance quantitative and qualitative aspects. You should also avoid vanity metrics, which are metrics that look good but don't provide any value or insight. For example, you should avoid focusing on metrics like followers, likes, or impressions, unless they are directly related to your goals. Instead, you should focus on metrics that show how your social media activities contribute to your business outcomes, such as leads, sales, or retention.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?