Social media is obviously a really powerful tool for marketing your small business! But the most important part of social media isn’t what you post, how you engage, or how pretty your feed is. Instead, you need to prioritize tracking your social media metrics for the best results!
There’s so much misinformation online about which social media metrics to track.
The truth is that vanity metrics like followers won’t get you the results you’re looking for! Instead, you need to dig deep into the metrics that truly matter.
Types of Social Media Metrics To Consider
There are different social media metrics that are important for each layer of your sales funnel!
Depending on where your audience is in the funnel (and your current goals for that audience), you’ll tailor your content differently and track results uniquely, too.
There are four main pieces of your funnel you’ll want to consider for social media metrics:
- Awareness—inform your audience (and potential customers)
- Engagement—interaction with content
- Conversion—effectiveness of your social media
- Consumer—active customers
Each piece of your funnel has essential metrics to track. Basically, social media metrics are meant to help you evaluate your efforts and adjust your strategy accordingly! That way, you can consistently produce the amazing results you’re hoping to achieve.
Why Should You Track Social Media Metrics?
There are lots of vanity metrics out there, like the number of followers you have. While these metrics look nice, they don’t actually tell you valuable information about your sales funnel or marketing efforts!
Instead, you need to focus on social media metrics tailored specifically to actions inside your business.
Understanding your metrics is key because it helps you know, understand, and provide value to your audience and potential customers!
If you’ve never actually tracked your social media metrics before, that’s okay! You’re definitely not alone—it’s a step that a lot of people (unfortunately) overlook. But it really is so important.
Here are some quick tips to start tracking your social media metrics this month!
- Take a few minutes each day to see which of your posts performed best recently
- Then, take a few minutes each week to look at your analytics and compare to the week before
- Pop over to your Google Analytics account to see where your website traffic is coming from—and which social platforms are driving the most traffic
- Examine your analytics to find your best post times for both reach and engagement
- See what your customers frequently ask in comments and direct messages
- Figure out where visitors from social media to your website spend their time
- Check in to see what posts drive the most engagement and traffic to your website
- See if conversions followed from social media efforts
With these steps, you’ll be able to start consistently implementing strategic social media changes driven by analytics!
Want to know a secret? When you start using the right social media metrics to know and serve your customer, metrics like followers will start to rise organically, too.
Related: Where You Need To Be On Social Media
5 Social Media Metrics All Small Businesses Should Track
Now that you know why it’s important and how to start, let’s talk about which social media metrics you should be tracking! These are the five most important metrics any small business should track.
1. Engagement
Engagement is incredibly important on any social media platform. First, it helps show you that audiences are interested in your content, which helps you tailor what you create. But even more importantly, it boosts your reach because most social media platforms use engagement to determine whether a post should be shown to more viewers!
To find your engagement rate, add up all of the interactions on a post, and then divide by the number of followers you had when you made that post.
You can also determine engagement on reach, which can be a better indicator of your success. To find this number, add up all of the interactions on a post, and then divide by the reach of that post.
Make sure to check in and evaluate your engagement at least once a month, and then try adding quarterly and yearly reviews on top of those monthly ones!
2. Post Reach
Your post reach isn’t the most important metric to track, but it does help show you when it’s the best time to post on your social media accounts! It also helps you see what types of content your audience actually enjoys—sometimes, content reaches lots of people and gets no engagement, which isn’t good.
Another key element of reach is showing you what types of content perform best on that platform in general. One example is Instagram Reels—this type of content is performing really well because Instagram wants to encourage users to try it out.
Your reach is something you should look at monthly, quarterly, and yearly!
3. Direct Messages
You probably haven’t thought about your direct messages as any sort of metric. But they’re really powerful for measuring success! If someone takes the time to message you, there’s a much higher chance that they’ll convert over someone who likes or comments.
If you’re wondering how to actually measure the success of your direct messages, there are a few things you can do.
First, for Facebook and Instagram, use the “Insights” tab on Facebook to see how many messages you’ve received and how long it typically takes for you to respond.
Make sure to track the number of messages you receive each month on every social media platform—you can even summarize what the messages were about in a spreadsheet for yourself. This helps you understand common questions, issues, and even what helped you convert prospects to customers!
4. Website Clicks
Website clicks really are one of the most important social media metrics. By tracking your website clicks, you’ll know what’s working on your social media and what’s really moving people to take action.
Although every social media platform pretty much has a way to track website clicks, there’s an even better way!
By adding UTMs to your links you’ll be able to see how visitors arrived to your website inside Google Analytics.
Although this sounds a little complex, it’s actually simple to set up.
UTMs are super important especially for tracking website visitors from Instagram—otherwise, they don’t specify where they came from and show up as “direct.”
Related: Where To Find UTM Data In Google Analytics
5. User Activity On Your Website (Driven By Social Media)
The last key social media metric you should be tracking regularly is how your social media visitors interact on your website! This type of metric contextualizes what posts are doing well by giving you the results, rather than just the interest.
By examining your website activity from social media, you’ll be able to make strategic adjustments! You’ll see what possible issues there are and be able to take steps to fix them now.
Small businesses can use social media in powerful ways to build and convert an audience. But without social media metrics, you’re basically throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something will stick.
With these metrics on your side, you’ll be able to make strategic, informed, data-driven decisions for your social media. And those types of posts will consistently get you the results you want!
Want to know exactly what social media platforms are driving your traffic? Make sure to snag my Traffic Insights Dashboard to take action in ways that truly generate ROI!
Check out these post and start using data you have at your fingertips to make smarter business decisions based on what your users are doing:
- The 5 most Important Metrics to Measure Your Website’s Success
- How Traffic Data Can (and Should) Drive Your Marketing Strategy
- How Google Analytics Can Make You A Better Copywriter
