Social media has transformed an ecommerce brand’s ability to personalize and improve customer experience, inform digital strategies, boost credibility among audiences, and nurture prospects. In this era of digital transformation, businesses are having to leverage social media for reaching and engaging global audiences. 

However, investing time and effort into social media marketing without understanding its impact on business goals is fruitless.

Monitoring social media metrics helps businesses gauge whether or not various marketing campaigns are working as per their expectations. In this article, we will discuss the seven social metrics every marketer should track to measure their campaign success, and how to improve those metrics.

Why Track Social Media Metrics?

Social media metrics help businesses measure how successful their social campaigns are and the impact of those campaigns on overall business objectives. These metrics give detailed insights into the actions businesses need to take to ensure the campaigns meet their marketing goals. 

For example, if you are launching a new product, brand awareness would be your primary objective. In such cases, metrics, such as post reach and impressions can help you understand the effectiveness of your social media content.

Monitoring the metrics also plays a crucial role in social media optimization. Businesses can identify the key performers and bottlenecks in the campaign execution and revamp their strategy accordingly. These metrics also help in identifying the best social platforms for reaching out to the desired target audience.

Social media is constantly evolving. With the introduction of new features and frequent algorithm changes, businesses take time to understand what is working for them and what is not. Tracking social media metrics certainly helps businesses stay firm in this shifting social media landscape.

7 Social Media Metrics to Track

1. Reach and Impressions

Although reach and impression are considered to be vanity metrics, they play a crucial role in helping brands understand the performance of their content. Reach determines the number of people who see the content while impressions tell us the number of times people have seen your content. 

Post impressions are generally on the higher side when compared to the post reach. This is because your followers could be looking at your posts multiple times. These metrics help businesses build tailored content that their audience can relate to and engage with. A decline in these numbers will mean it's time to revise your strategy.

Another instance where reach and impressions play a significant role is in social media ads. These metrics give you valuable insights into the performance of your ads that you can leverage to optimize the ad content and ad spend to suit your goals. Reach and impressions are typically valuable to newer ecommerce brands or growing influencers rather than highly-established brands. Popular brands will likely always see high reach and impression counts, so these stats may not be as valuable to assessing campaign performance.

2. Audience Engagement

Audience engagement metrics determine how people interact with your content on social media i.e. likes, comments, shares, and saves. The count of these actions divided by the number of followers gives you an average engagement rate for your page on that particular social platform.

Engagement rate gives you insights into the type of content that is attracting and encouraging your audience to interact with your brand. It is a sign of the followers' trust and loyalty to your brand. On many social platforms, engagement metrics also help you identify the brand loyalists who are actively acting as your brand ambassadors.

Instagram allows business accounts to access demographic information about their audiences in addition to reach and engagement data specific to individual posts.

Further, the social media reach algorithms are written in a way that the higher the engagement rate is, the better the content’s reach and visibility. For brands, a high share count can be especially valuable, as this indicates potential word-of-mouth marketing between followers and their own networks.

#3. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate refers to the percentage of people who have completed the desired action. This can include any action, such as clicking on the website link, subscribing to a blog, downloading an ebook, and more. It is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the total clicks and multiplying the result by 100.

For example, the screenshots below show insights into an Instagram story highlight. Check out the number and types of actions taken on the post.

Conversion rates are important because they help businesses analyze the performance of their content across various social channels. These rates also help in setting up ROI expectations when planning new campaigns. By allowing businesses to focus their efforts in the right places, conversion rates help in boosting the overall campaign ROI.  

Here are some best practices that businesses can follow to optimize social media conversion rates.

• Set clear and achievable goals. Remember conversion rate optimization takes time
• Ensure that the CTA link is trackable. Use URL shorteners, if required
• Understand the campaign requirements before developing a CRO roadmap
• Track the results on a timely basis by conducting A/B tests
• Identify the bottlenecks or poor performers and optimize the strategy

#4. Social Share of Voice

Social share of voice (SSoV) refers to the number of people who are talking about your brand when compared with that of your competitors. These social media mentions could be direct (the post tags your profile or website) or indirect (the post mentions your brand or product without linking to your channels). 

Pixlee TurnTo’s social listening functionalities allow brands to not only see posts that mention their name, products, or unique hashtags, brands can also automatically pull that content into the Pixlee TurnTo platform, obtain permission, and reuse that content on their own channels. Revel Nail uses Pixlee TurnTo to automate this process and collect user-generated content (UGC) from fans mentioning the brand on Instagram.

To calculate the SSoV rate, you must add up your brand mentions, divide it by the industry total, and multiply the result by 100. 

SSoV rate is an important metric because:

• It gives you intelligent audience insights via authentic conversations your followers are having on social media about your brand.
• It keeps you updated about the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, thereby helping you devise an efficient promotion strategy.
• It helps you monitor your brand reputation and deliver a great experience to the customers

#5. Audience Growth Rate

Audience growth rate refers to the percentage increase in the number of followers a business page receives over a certain period. It defines the speed at which any brand's followers increase across various social media platforms.

This statistic can be especially useful for brands comparing the number of followers they typically gain in a week compared to upticks they may see when running a social media contest, for example.

Windsor ran an Instagram contest that required users to follow the brand account in order to be eligible for a feature and gift card. 

The audience growth rate metric helps businesses set clear and achievable goals and allows you to track how the follower count has increased over time. 

#6. Return on Ad Spend

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) is an essential metric for businesses that have been running paid advertisements on social media. It helps them evaluate their advertising efforts and improve their future ad strategy. 

This metric measures the revenue the social media ads generate against the amount spent on them, thereby helping businesses understand whether or not their advertising strategy is efficient. 

The ROAS metric helps businesses identify the well-performing ads of the campaign so that they can be scaled to yield maximum results. Further, ROAS results can be used in optimizing ad budget and refining the marketing strategy. 

#7. Social Sentiment

Social Sentiment is another important metric that businesses need to track to understand the customers' sentiments — their feelings, thoughts, and attitudes towards their brands. By analyzing the context in the comments, mentions, and shares, businesses can learn what customers are talking about their brand. 

Monitoring social sentiment helps businesses capture customers' pain points, monitor their perception of the brand, and deliver great customer experiences.

Fans in the comments section of a Jones Soda Instagram post indicate that they almost forgot the brand sold its soda in cans, opening the door to a potential campaign focused on the brand’s cans.

Investing in an automated sentiment analysis tool or social media management tools to monitor and track customers' emotions helps businesses with taking the required actions without any hassles.

To ensure success in social media marketing, businesses should focus on setting achievable goals and tracking the various metrics mentioned in the article to measure the impact of the social strategy. This will help businesses achieve a better ROI and scale their venture.