Social media plays a key role in most people’s daily lives. Many of us scroll Facebook, X/Twitter, or one of countless other sites to keep up with others and for personal entertainment. It can be an incredible tool for business owners, who can use it to increase brand awareness, develop a rapport with customers, and better advertise their services.
That said, you can’t go into social media marketing without an effective strategy. Tracking social media KPIs can help you see what works, what doesn’t, and what adjustments to make. Without that information, you’ll set yourself up to get lost in the shuffle of everything competing for consumers’ attention.
Understanding key performance indicators for social media might seem difficult if you’re unfamiliar with the term or how to access such information. At Connective, we’re ready to help you learn which KPIs are most useful and how to track them. Read on to learn everything you need to know.
What are social media KPIs?
Good social media marketing requires careful planning. You’ll need to think carefully about your audience, create appealing images and copy, and develop a consistent posting schedule. Treating social media marketing as a “set-and-forget” strategy will come back to bite you.
You can’t stop at the planning stage. Once your campaign goes live, you must ensure it works as intended. Is it reaching the right audience? Are you achieving your social media goals? Is it actually helping your business, or do you feel like you’re constantly wasting resources?
That’s where social media key performance indicators (KPIs) come in. KPIs are essentially metrics that tell you how certain strategies perform. These can include how many comments your posts get, how many new followers you obtain, and how many people your posts reach, among other things. KPI tracking for social platforms is a great way to check your tactics’ effectiveness and make them more valuable to your business.
Why are KPIs important for social media marketing?
Sometimes, social media strategies work exactly as intended. You start making posts, people share them with friends, and your business grows as a result of this online activity.
Other times, plans might go awry. Perhaps you’ve been making posts for weeks on end, but each only gets a couple of comments or likes. If you don’t monitor performance metrics in social media, this might go unnoticed for a long time. You could end up wasting resources on a strategy that doesn’t add much value to your business.
Alternatively, maybe a strategy works much better than intended. You’d likely want to pour more of your time and energy into similar strategies — but you might not even realize how effective the original strategy is if you don’t track how it performs.
To address these issues, implementing a Balanced Scorecard could be highly beneficial. Essentially, a scorecard is a tool for both planning and managing business strategies, including those used on social media. By developing a dedicated scorecard for your social media efforts, you can effectively track your key performance indicators (KPIs) and ensure your strategies are contributing value to your business.
Essentially, social media KPIs let you see what’s effective and what isn’t. From there, you can adjust strategies that aren’t working or focus more on ones that are, fine-tuning your social media marketing strategy.
Best KPIs to track for social media
There are countless KPIs to keep track of, from how many people engage with your posts to how often your posts appear on other people’s feeds. You must know the most useful ones to keep up with your competitors. Hoping your customer base will increase organically through some kind of social media snowball effect isn’t going to work.
Engagement rate
The engagement rate indicates how often people interact with your posts, including liking, sharing, and commenting. Better tactics lead to increased engagement as more people put their eyes on your content. Visibility ensures your brand stays at the forefront of consumers’ minds among the many other options they might consider for your product or service.
To calculate your average engagement rate, add together your total likes, shares, and comments. Divide by your follower count and multiply by 100, giving you your percentage.
Reach and impressions
These metrics measure how often someone comes across your posts:
- Impressions indicate how often a post appears on other people’s feeds
- Reach indicates how many people have seen your post overall
- Potential reach indicates how many people could see your post
The more reach your post has, the more likely a potential customer is to find you.
Click-through rate (CTR)
The click-through rate indicates how often people click on a link in your social media post. To determine your click-through rate, divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions and multiply the result by 100.
Conversion rate
The conversion rate indicates how effectively your post convinced a reader to take a certain action. This may mean convincing them to make a purchase, enter a raffle, or even leave a comment, among other things.
To determine your conversion rate, you’d first need to determine the number of users who performed the desired action. Then, you’d divide that number by the number of people who clicked on the link in your post. Then, multiply the result by 100 to get your percentage.
Follower growth rate
As the name implies, follower growth rate indicates how quickly you gain followers. Growth rates often fluctuate and may increase at certain times of the year or after making impactful posts.
Sentiment analysis
A sentiment analysis is an assessment of how people view your business. Comments and reviews can be useful tools in determining overall sentiment; take the time to read through them and see what customers are saying, then figure out ways to address any concerns.
Customer service metrics
Customer service metrics indicate how well you respond to and address customer concerns. Taking time to respond to comments and answer questions can improve customers’ opinions of your business, potentially increasing referrals.
Share of voice
The more notable a business, the more people will talk about it. Your “share of voice” is how often your brand is mentioned compared to your competitors. The bigger your share, the more likely you are to draw in potential customers.
Content performance
Not all content is created equal. Some will attract a significant amount of attention; other content types may gain very little traction at all. Content performance lets you track how individual posts perform.
Pay attention to the number of likes, shares, and comments each post gets. Compare these numbers to see what’s performing best, then adjust your strategy accordingly.
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
As a business owner, you need to ensure you’re making wise financial decisions. Tracking the cost per acquisition (CPA) can help you do that. This metric helps you keep track of how much money you spend to recruit one new customer. Ideally, you want to use marketing strategies that draw in a lot of customers while spending very little money.
To determine your total CPA, divide the cost of implementing a marketing strategy by the number of new customers that strategy obtains. If that number is high, you may want to consider new tactics.
Social media traffic and referrals
How much traffic do your social media pages receive weekly? How many people have referred you to others? An increase in traffic and referrals can indicate that you have a solid marketing strategy in place. Pay attention to what seems to increase these numbers, then focus your efforts accordingly.
Brand mentions and hashtag performance
Using hashtags effectively can be an excellent way to promote your company. These tools help you organize your posts, boost your visibility, and increase brand awareness.
Analyze what hashtags would work best for your posts. Track how often your posts show up under these hashtags and make adjustments accordingly.
In addition, it can be helpful to make brand- or campaign-specific hashtags. Encourage other people to use these hashtags to help advertise.
However, hashtags aren’t the only thing you should pay attention to. You should also monitor how often people mention your brand; the more people share your information, the more customers you can attract.
Audience demographics and behavior
What sort of customer does your content target? Do you want to target your services toward younger individuals or older ones? Are you trying to reach working-class individuals or people with a more upper-class lifestyle?
Understanding your audience and their behaviors is vital to effective social media marketing. Take the time to build a buyer persona, identifying key features of the people you want to target. From there, look at what sorts of posts and activities this audience seems most interested in. Tailor your posts around that information; should these people see your posts, they’ll be more likely to interact with them.
Cross-platform KPI analysis
Tracking KPIs is important, but using multiple social media platforms can be difficult. You can’t just focus on each site individually; you must examine how performance compares across sites to understand your marketing strategy’s effectiveness.
Take the time to look at the important KPIs for each platform. Use a spreadsheet, a social media management platform, or other software to compare them. If one site seems to be having less impact, pause to figure out why. Then, combine the information across sites for a comprehensive look at your strategy’s success.
How do you choose the right social media KPIs for your business?
KPI tracking for social platforms is an effective way to improve your marketing strategies. However, paying attention to every KPI can take more time and resources than it’s worth. Because of this, you’ll need to determine what’s most useful for your business.
Doing so can feel intimidating. That’s why we’ve created a step-by-step guide to help you settle on the right KPIs to track.
Understand business objectives
What sort of business do you run? Are you an independent contractor looking for work, or do you own an eCommerce shop? Do you only want to sell a product, or would you also like to educate your customers?
If you want an effective social media campaign, it’s important to identify specific objectives for your business. Take the time to think carefully about:
- Who your target audience is
- What services you provide
- Whether there’s anything you want to do in addition to selling a product or service
Write down your objectives and narrow down what’s most important. Doing so will give you a basic idea of how to tailor your strategy.
Identify social media goals
Each social media campaign is different. Some people may want to use social media sites to network with other professionals; others may use them primarily to build their customer base. Different goals may require you to track different KPIs, so it’s important to consider things accordingly.
As a business owner, take the time to ask yourself what you want to get out of your social media campaign. Do you want to build some sort of community? Are you trying to get more people to visit your site? Would you like to help people learn about your industry? Make a list of your goals, then isolate the most important ones.
Consider audience and platform
Social media platforms can vary widely in how people use them. TikTok, for example, focuses mostly on short-form video content. X/Twitter requires short, snappy posts that can attract attention quickly. LinkedIn has a more professional atmosphere and a higher character limit. Each platform will require different strategies to be effective.
However, knowing how to use each platform effectively shouldn’t be your only concern. You’ll also want to consider your target audience, their habits, and which social media site they might gravitate to. Are you primarily targeting a younger audience? If so, TikTok might be a good choice. Are your services aimed more toward middle-aged homeowners? Facebook might be a good option.
In addition, different demographics may not interact with social media the same way. Some might be more prone to sharing and commenting on posts; others may simply “like” and keep scrolling.
Take the time to consider which platforms you’re most comfortable using, what your audience favors, and what would work best for your content. Once you’ve settled on the platforms suited to your needs, consider how your audience will interact with your content on those platforms.
Prioritize relevant metrics
Once you’ve determined your social media and business goals, decided on one (or multiple) platforms, and defined your audience, you can begin identifying which KPIs are most relevant to your needs. If you want to boost your overall presence, consider working on things like reach and follower count; if you want to make sales, you might focus more on click-through rates and conversions.
For example:
- You own a landscaping business. You’ve decided to post more on Instagram since that can make showcasing pictures of your work easier. Your ultimate goal for social media is to drive engagement, hoping that more people will spread the word about your work. Relevant KPIs might include follower growth and engagement rate.
- You own an eCommerce shop and want to drive sales. You’ve decided to post on Facebook, hoping more people will see your ads and click through to your site. You’d likely want to focus on metrics such as reach, impressions, and click-through rates over anything else.
- You’re a content creator and want to build a community around your work. You’ve chosen to branch out across a few platforms, including TikTok, X/Twitter, and Instagram, and have tailored strategies to each accordingly. Because your platform is more community-focused, you’d want to pay close attention to follower sentiment and customer service metrics.
Take the time to think about which KPIs are most important. Isolate the top ones and focus on monitoring them.
Monitor, adjust, and benchmark
After you’ve identified the most important KPIs, check them regularly. You can do this daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on your preference and workload.
Identify upward and downward trends in your KPIs. Did your follower count go up after you released a new social media campaign? Have more people been finding your company since you implemented branded hashtags? Have you noticed that your posts haven’t gotten as much engagement as you’d like? If your KPIs suggest you aren’t meeting your goals, you can adjust your social media marketing strategy accordingly.
In addition, setting specific goals for your business can be beneficial — for example, trying to reach a follower milestone by the end of the month. Not only can this give you something to work toward, but if you exceed or fall short of this benchmark, you’ll get more information on what strategies work and which ones need improvement.
What tools are available for monitoring social media KPIs?
You can’t just let a campaign go live without monitoring its performance. You must constantly monitor KPIs and make adjustments accordingly.
Trying to monitor social media KPIs manually can be a challenge. Thankfully, you have access to plenty of tools to make things easier.
Social media platforms’ native analytics
Most social media platforms have ways for users to keep an eye on social media analytics. These tools might let you see how your follower count has increased, how many people have commented on your post, and much more.
Facebook Audience Insights
Facebook Audience Insights is an incredible tool for marketers. This tool lets you see what groups of people are interacting with your posts at a glance. This way, you can tell whether your posts are reaching the right audience.
LinkedIn Audience Analytics
Like Facebook’s Audience Insights, LinkedIn Audience Analytics lets you see who interacts with your content. You can sort by date to see how many followers you’ve gained and the total number of followers overall. In addition, you can sort by various demographics, such as industry, location, and job title.
TikTok Audience Insights
TikTok Audience Insights lets you learn more about your audience and how they interact with your posts, including their interests, location, and general activity. You can access information about your potential audience and who you reached. In addition, the tool lets you filter by different metrics, including age, hashtag interactions, and more.
Instagram Insights
Instagram Insights lets you get more information on your followers, your posts’ performance, and how your audience interacts with your posts. You can look at this information as a whole or get a more detailed breakdown by individual metrics.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics allows business owners to track metrics related to their business. These may include:
- Sessions: A session is any time someone visits your site. Effective posts can increase the number of sessions.
- Average session duration: This indicates how long someone spends on a page. The longer they stay, the more likely they will take the desired action.
- Bounce rate: Bounce rate is how many people leave your page without taking any action. Naturally, you’ll want to take steps to lower your bounce rate.
Using Google Analytics can be an excellent way to monitor your website traffic, particularly how much of that is driven by social media.
To access this information, go to your Google Analytics account’s “Acquisition” page. Click on either “Traffic Acquisition” or “User Acquisition,” then focus on the section labeled “Organic Social.” Sort by date and time to identify where traffic increased, compare traffic for different months, and more.
Hootsuite
If you’re a small business, you might focus on a single social media platform. As you grow, you may start branching out, creating several accounts across multiple sites.
Keeping track of social media analytics across several sites can be difficult without assistance. Thankfully, social media management platforms can handle the task for you. These platforms compile data on followers, traffic, engagement, and more across different sites, letting you see important information at a glance.
Hootsuite is one of the most useful social media management platforms on the market. This customizable tool lets you view your desired analytics in a comprehensive report. Depending on your needs, you can focus on a couple of metrics or multiple across several sites. Its user-friendly interface makes it an excellent tool for business owners looking to improve their social media marketing strategy.
Sprout Social
Hootsuite isn’t the only social media management platform out there. Sprout Social is a high-quality platform that integrates information from several social media sites, including Facebook, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. The site not only provides you with tools to make posting easier but also offers:
- Reports on the total impressions, engagement, and more across sites
- The ability to sort your analytics by site
- The ability to learn more about what’s popular in your industry via the social listening feature
- And more
Using this tool can be an excellent way to keep track of important metrics with less stress.
How do you measure ROI from social media efforts?
As a business owner, you want to ensure a high social media ROI (return on investment). You can track your ROI in a few different ways, including CPA, ROAS, and the overall ROI of a social media campaign.
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
Most marketing strategies will require some sort of investment. For a successful campaign, you must balance that cost with the benefits gained.
Pay close attention to the number of new customers you gain from your social media marketing efforts. If you’re spending a significant amount of money with few new customers, then you aren’t getting a high return on investment, and you’ll want to change your strategy.
Return on ad spend (ROAS)
Ads are an important part of any marketing strategy. Social media ads, in particular, can be excellent ways to reach new customers since they’ll appear on their feeds while they’re browsing.
To get the most out of your ads, however, you must ensure they’re effective. Look closely at your return on ad spend (ROAS) — that is, how much money you earn from your ads compared to how much you spend on them. The higher the ROAS, the better your social media efforts.
To determine ROAS, calculate the revenue you earned from your social media ads. Divide that number by the amount you spent on them, then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
Social media campaign ROI
Generating revenue is the main goal of any business. That said, not all social media efforts focus on convincing customers to make a purchase. Perhaps you wanted to increase brand visibility, so you started a campaign to generate more awareness. Or, maybe very few people engage with your posts, so you tried to increase that number.
Social media campaign ROI doesn’t focus solely on monetary gains; it encompasses everything you might obtain from a campaign, from gaining followers to boosting engagement.
To determine your ROI, consider what you want to get out of your social media campaign. For example, say your goal was to boost your follower count. Isolate how many new followers you obtained throughout the campaign, then divide it by how much you spent on the campaign overall. Tailor this strategy to look at metrics for other goals, including engagement, shares, and more.
Challenges in tracking social media KPIs
While tracking social media KPIs is important, it isn’t always easy. Many business owners may find themselves running into challenges along the way. It’s important to know what obstacles you might face and prepare accordingly.
Data accuracy and consistency
Social media platforms generally try to provide you with data that’s as accurate as possible. Unfortunately, however, data-tracking technology isn’t perfect, which may skew your data. In addition, a strategy that worked well at first may suddenly decrease in effectiveness for no apparent reason.
Taking advantage of all the tools at your disposal is important for getting the most accurate results. If you see something strange — for example, a new demographic suddenly interacting with your posts — dig into the information to find out more.
Attribution modeling
Attribution modeling is when you give credit to certain channels for the amount of growth you receive. Sometimes, business owners may attribute too much or too little to social media marketing efforts, which can skew results. It’s important to keep close track of your KPIs and to remain realistic about how your social media campaigns compare to the rest of your marketing efforts.
Keeping up with platform changes
No social media platform stays the same forever. Changes to how certain features function can affect your posts’ performances. You’ll need to monitor any updates closely and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
What are some common mistakes to avoid when tracking social media KPIs?
It can be easy to make mistakes, especially if you’re new to social media measurement. Avoid the most common mistakes to improve your campaign:
Focusing on vanity metrics
Vanity metrics are stats that might look nice on paper but, in practice, don’t offer much to your business. Almost any metric can be a vanity metric, so focusing only on the KPIs that truly further your business’s goals is important.
Neglecting conversions
Getting more engagement is nice, but it might not mean much without converting customers. As a business, your goal is to sell your products or services, so it’s important to take steps to convert followers into actual paying customers.
Overlooking audience insights
Understanding your audience is incredibly important. Audience insights allow you to learn more about who’s actually interacting with your posts. Ignoring them may mean you’re missing out on an incredible marketing opportunity that requires relatively little effort to reach with a bit of extra marketing savvy.
Ignoring regular monitoring and adjustments
Social media KPIs are only useful if you monitor how they change. Certain strategies may work for a time but fall out of popularity, especially as social media standards, names, and internal operations vary drastically with time. If you don’t monitor your KPIs, you could miss important changes like this, making your social media efforts less effective.
Keep a close eye on your KPIs. Adjust your marketing strategy if you notice some are lower than you’d like. Above all, always trust your data. Metrics usually paint the truest picture of your brand’s relevance, so be sure to take its lessons seriously and adapt accordingly.
Social media KPIs can be incredible tools. Take the time to study them and identify the most useful ones to build the best omnichannel marketing strategy.
