The top 5 metrics we monitor on social media
Having knowledge of what the different metrics you see talked about all the time across social media analytics may seem like a very large and daunting task. In the long run it’s very worth while. All of the analytics pages have slight variations to them, but overall you get the same information from all of them. From these different analytic decks the main thing you gain from them is a better understanding of your audience. The analytics help you understand your audiences: Likes, Dislikes and to see what they view and when.
1. Post Engagement:
Engagement is a very direct way to measure and see how well your audience is responding and reacting to your content. It’s a good way to see if they’re (your audience) are liking, commenting and sharing your content. Across the different social media platforms there are a few ways to figure out your engagement. That is if the social platform you’re on doesn’t provide it for you.
For Instagram: (Will come out as a percentage)
Engagement rate = (likes + Comments) / Followers x 100
For Facebook: (Will come out as a percentage)
Engagement Rate = (Total engaged users / Total Reach) x 100
It’s a good habit to get into to see how well your audience engage with each post, and to see which style of post gets the most engagement, it’s always good to switch up the content now and again.
2. Reach
If you are trying to expand your audience you need to see your reach grow. On Facebook, Instagram and Twitter they make your life very easy by letting you see your reach on each post.
One thing to keep in mind is that reach and impressions are two completely different things. Your impressions are the total number of times your post has been seen. This includes, people scrolling past it, viewing in on your profile, seeing it on the discovery page, sending it in a DM (direct message), so your impressions will be higher. One tip we have for you, if you’re not seeing improved reach, try different hashtags to the ones you are currently using as they may become stale, and a change in the style of your posts.
3. Timings of your posts
This one is very straight forward and one we talk about often. All you have to do is check your analytics or insights for when your audience is most active once you know the schedule your post to when they are liking, commenting and sharing the most. If you time it right you’ll place your content right in-front of your audience at the optimum time and get the most results.
4. Audience Retention
One of the toughest parts of putting content out is getting people to view it. From videos, to long captions on your posts, not everyone is going to read or watch it. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter make it very easy for you to see how well a video has done, they show you exactly how many people have viewed it. Facebook have a feature that shows you exactly how much audience retention you have. You are able to see how many views overall you have, how many people viewed it past 3 seconds and how many viewed it past 10 seconds. This give you an insight into your audience drop off rate too.
It’s quite easy to figure out your audience viewership and retention by how many followers/likes you have to compare it to your views. You’ll quickly see that your most popular type of content by the amount of views and viewer retention you get per piece of content you put out.
5. Website Referrals
This one is straight forward, but where you want to see the most results. Its directly measurable, you can see how many people visit your website from your social media platforms, and you can see which one is doing the best in terms of referrals. Once they have arrived onto your website you are then able to see where they visit on your website through the behavioural flow in your analytics. Once you have enough data to make an judgement call as to where your social traffic is going, you can tailor their experience.
Not everyone will be measuring the same metrics on their social media, as not everyone’s needs are the same. We thought that this would be a helpful and interesting insight and a good place to start if you’re feeling a little stuck as to where to star.