If you’re looking to expand your business online these days, social media is the place to grow. While some business owners may think social media is a place for funny memes, cute animals, and relatives sharing misinformation – and they’re not completely wrong – there are so many opportunities for brands looking to create long-lasting relationships with their audience.
These days, 95% of internet users aged 18-34 follow at least one brand on social media. A good social media strategy can help your business create authentic relationships with customers. The problem is that it’s not necessarily easy to monitor results and track success. If analyzing social media metrics feels like a maze with no clear end in sight, we’re here to help you navigate all those twists and turns. Keep reading to find out which five metrics you should know and why they matter to your brand.
What are the Most Important Social Media Metrics to Track?
Numbers are great until you have no idea what they mean. There are plenty of metrics out there, and the number of options can be overwhelming unless you become an analytics afficionado.
The good news is that you don’t need to know all the metrics to measure how well your social media strategy works. Here are five social media metrics that can help you assess how well your brand is doing with your online audience.
- Engagement rate
- Reach
- Impressions
- Follower count/audience growth rate
- Video views/video completion rate
Engagement rate
What is engagement rate?
Engagement rate measures how many people interact with your content. These interactions can differ by platform, but generally include the following types of actions:
- Likes
- Comments
- Shares
- Saves
- Link clicks
- Video views
- Reactions
Engagement rate is calculated by adding up all the combined engagements and diving that number by your total followers. Multiply that number by 100 and you’ll have a percentage that represents your engagement rate.
Why does engagement rate matter?
An engaged audience is one that likes your content. In a world where you’re constantly trying to reach your audience, engagements are direct proof that your content both reaches those people and that it resonates with them, whether you’re looking at a specific post or overall average.
Tracking engagement rate does more than just show you how often people interact with your content. Comparing success between posts can help you hone your content strategy and identify other opportunities for growth. Businesses can see how well people resonate with different products and which types of posts earn the most attention. From there, your brand can adjust accordingly!
Reach
What is reach?
Reach measures the number of people who have seen your post. That number includes the initial person and every person who has seen your content after that. Once a person is counted, they aren’t counted even if they view the post again in the future.
Why does reach matter?
Reach gives you a concrete number of just how many people see your content, both inside and outside of your audience. Reach is essentially the word-of-mouth portion of your social media. As more of your audience view and engage with your posts, reach lets you know how many people outside of your current followers got to see what your brand is all about. That added reach is key to helping more people learn about your brand through the sheer power of your existing audience.
Impressions
What are impressions?
Impressions officially track the total number of times people see your content. Imagine someone sees a post and they love it. And then they go back to it. And then they go back again. Every single one of their views counts as an impression.
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Why do impressions matter?
Who says that people only need to enjoy your content once? While reach gives you a clear idea of how many people see your content, impressions help you learn just how much those people loved that content. Impressions give you a better idea of just how often your audience sees your content, whether it reappears in their feed or they saved it for future enjoyment.
Follower count and audience growth rate
What are follower count and audience growth rate?
The title of this post promised five social media metrics, so consider this combo a bonus! Follower count measures how many people actively follow your brand on a platform. Audience growth rate measures how many followers you’ve gained over time.
Why do follower count and audience growth rate matter?
Social media is great for creating long-lasting relationships with customers, and that all starts with a follow. Your follower count and audience growth rate are indicators of how well you’re developing those relationships. Ideally, you’ll want to build a dedicated captive audience with steady growth over time. If that growth stagnates, it might be time to revamp your approach.
Video views and video completion rate
What are video views and video completion rate?
Like follower count and audience growth rate, these metrics are an important duo to track together. Video views are like impressions – it tracks the number of times someone watched your video. However, a “view” isn’t counted until a person watches the video for a certain amount of time. The standard view time is 3 seconds, but can differ by platform:
- YouTube – 30 seconds
- Facebook – 3 seconds
- Instagram – 3 seconds
- TikTok – 1 second, or 3 seconds for videos longer than 3 minutes
- X – 2 seconds
Video completion rate tracks how many viewers watch the full video from beginning to end. For example, if 1,000 people watched enough of a video to trigger as a view and 500 of those people watched the whole video, that video would have a video completion rate of 50% with 1,000 total video views.
Why do video views and video completion rate matter?
Video views and completion rate give you a good idea of how many people your video reached and how truly engaged they were with your content. Video views are a great sign of how much exposure your videos can get, especially as you grow your following.
Completion rate has an even more important job – it lets you know if your people are genuinely interested in your video. A high completion rate means that you created a truly engaging video, while a low rate means that people don’t think your content is worth their time. In the latter situation, check your videos to see if the content should be more engaging, if it’s too long, or if the load time took too long.
Use Social Media Metrics to Build Your Social Community
Behind every single social post is a treasure trove of data that brands can use to improve their social media strategy. These insights can give you the information you need to adjust your content and build a community that’s genuinely engaged with your content, whether you’re simply sharing your story or promoting products.
Of course, you don’t have to develop your social media strategy alone. Aztek partners with businesses to develop successful social media programs that build authentic communities dedicated to your brand. Reach out to us today to talk to one of our experts and see if we’re a good fit for your business.
