When it comes to monitoring the success of your social media posts you can quickly become overwhelmed with the sheer amount of data that’s available. And it doesn’t help that every social media platform has its own unique way of displaying and measuring the data. There are quite literally 100s of key performance indicators (KPIs) to track – so where do you start looking?
Let me put your mind at rest. In this blog I’m going to share with you the best 5 KPIs to track on social media. Focusing on these will set you up for success. Now, doesn’t that sound better already?
Why check social media KPIs?
While it’s not compulsory, it does make great business sense to keep track of social media key performance indicators.
I bet you go to a lot of trouble to identify the type of content that you believe will resonate with your audience, not to mention the amount of time you spend finding the right image to go with it.
If you don’t check how well your posts are performing, how will you ever know if you really are giving your customers and potential customers what they want? You could actually be wasting your time when you should be changing direction.
Which KPIs do I need to check and what’s the best data to collect on social media?
Alongside the 5 that I’m about to share with you, there are an abundance of KPIs that you can choose from.
When it comes to a business objective, aim to match it to a Social Media KPI. Make sure you have a way to monitor ALL of your key objectives. If you need help understanding the data available for each platform, please get in touch. Simply knowing where to find what you’re looking for can save you hours every month!
The top five to help you thrive!
- REACH: Otherwise known as impressions or views depending what platform you’re on. When you find out your ‘reach’, this is telling you how many people have seen your post in their newsfeed. This is a clear indicator that conveys how well your post has performed. A post that has reached lots of peoples newsfeed has obviously pleased that particular social media platform’s algorithms, been well received by your audience, and has been rewarded with good reach.
2. ENGAGEMENT: Knowing your ‘engagement’ number tells you how many people have engaged with a post. And by engaged with, I’m talking about clicking on the image to enlarge it, clicking on the ‘see more’ prompt to expand the text, liking the post, commenting or sharing it. This one can be a real eye opener as it gives a more accurate picture of the number of people interested in the post – things like clicking on the accompanying image for example can go undetected unless you check the data.
3. COMMENTS: A post that receives comments will outperform any other. It’s quite easy for someone to simply click a heart or a blue thumb to demonstrate that they like a post, but it takes time and a bit of energy to actually write a comment which is why the algorithms value them so highly. Comments are an indication that the post is of great interest.
4. ENQUIRIES: Let’s face it, us business owners use social media as part of our marketing strategy to ultimate gain business. Monitoring the number of enquiries you get through each social media platform that you use is really important. Collate how many direct messages (DMs) or comments that include enquiries you receive on each platform. This will tell you which social media platform is performing the best. And don’t ever hesitate to ask a new contact where they heard of you to achieve even more accuracy in your KPI reporting.
5. FOLLOWERS: Yes, it is of value to increase the number of followers, but don’t let the number of followers become your most important KPI. What you’re after is quality over quantity. You want to attract followers for the right reasons, and that reason should be because they’re interested in what you do and could convert to become a customer. Businesses who run competitions can find themselves with huge numbers of followers – but they run the risk of having large number of followers that are only ever after freebies or discounts!
And don’t forget that the social media platform will only send a newly published post to a very small fraction of your followers. If the followers that are lucky enough to receive your post in their newsfeed don’t engage with it, then the post will lie dormant and won’t achieve any further reach. This means that the followers who are interested in you and your business are highly unlikely to ever get to see some of your social media posts.
Don’t be tempted by the quick wins, it’s slow and steady organic growth that always wins the day!
What’s coming up?
To view all of my upcoming workshops where I show you how to use social media to the max, head over to my website today.
Bye for now,
Becs