What Social Media Metrics Should You Track?

What social media metrics do you track in order to measure success? Especially with the ever-changing algorithms of social platforms, it can feel almost impossible to have a grasp on what success even looks like on social media. 

As a small business owner or marketing manager, you’re likely tracking typical social metrics such as engagements, clicks, and followers. But what if there was more out there that could truly help you measure the success of your entire business? 

We’ve recently revamped our reporting methods to make sure we’re only providing the most valuable metrics to our clients. Of course, we always report on the traditional metrics like engagements and followers, but we’ve been challenging ourselves to push the envelope and question what metrics are the most valuable, and put our focus on those. 

SO WHAT SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS SHOULD YOU BE MEASURING? 

When we began revamping our reporting methods, we started looking at each client and their specific objectives, then made sure every metric we report on helps speak to those. Here are a few unique examples that may be right for you. 

BRAND ENGAGEMENT

One of the unique businesses we serve is a product distributor. Unique businesses require unique solutions, so as you can imagine, we’ve had to approach this client differently when measuring the success of marketing efforts. But we determined that the biggest mark of success is getting more brands to partner with them. So how does this translate on social?

We began tracking brand engagement.

How we do this: we count up the amount of posts across all their social media channels that tagged a brand in a given month, then count up how many of these posts received an engagement from said brand. 

Engagement from brand ÷ total tagged posts = brand engagement 

This helps us show the relationship between our client and the brand, which can speak to the overall success of the business. 

If you run a business that tags a lot of brands or other users, this could be an excellent option to determine the success of your tagging efforts and engagement beyond just post likes or comments. 

POST SAVES

Another unique client of ours sells B2B equipment. We may not see a sale for months or even years after they’ve been exposed to marketing efforts. So how do we gauge the interest of our followers?

We track saves. 

Instagram insights allow you to see how many times a post of yours was saved in a given time period. 

How to do this:

1. Go to Instagram insights.
2. Click on any metric within the “overview” section.
3. Scroll down to “top posts” and click “see all.”
4. At the top, change the middle metric to saves and choose your time frame. 

It can be assumed that followers are saving posts because they see a product they may need but are not ready to buy just yet. So by looking at the amount of post saves we get each month, we’re able to report to our client just how interested followers are in the products. Even better, we can show exactly which ones get the most saves to help us then determine which posts to focus on in social media, paid media, emails, and any other marketing efforts. 

If your selling process takes a long time or you sell niche products like this, this can be a great way to determine trends and even anticipate future deals.  

EMPLOYEE INTERACTIONS 

A few of our clients have put an emphasis on their employees’ LinkedIn success. We know that when an employee’s LinkedIn page is gaining traction, they can help their company page get some more visibility as well, and vice-versa. This also comes in handy when a business is very relationship-centric and relies heavily on personal trust. 

Did you know that LinkedIn will show you employee interactions? 

Go to the “activity” tab on your company’s LinkedIn page. 

You’ll see a call-out above any employee activity (see below). 

We then look at metrics such as engagements, reach/impressions, and followers to determine what correlations we see when employees are more engaged. This then helps us educate our clients’ employees on how to help the business succeed on LinkedIn. Typically, more employee engagement = more visibility on the company page = more success for everyone.

If you’re in a very relationship-based industry such as finance, this may be a great way to track the success of your entire business on social media. Open it up to more than just your company page.  

At the end of the day, your business is unique, so you should be tracking unique metrics. There’s always a way to see how social media is helping you reach your business goals—it just may not be in the form of engagements or followers. 

If you’re already a client of ours and this sparked a new idea, let us know! If you’re not a client of ours yet but want some help determining how to track the right social media metrics, don’t hesitate to reach out.