What Social Media Metrics You NEED To Be Monitoring For Business Growth

Social media is one of the most powerful tools your business can use for growth and understanding social media metrics helps you use these platforms to your advantage.

If you’re looking to build brand awareness and grow your business, then monitoring and analysing social media metrics is a must.

What Are Social Media Metrics?

Social media metrics are analysed data markers that measure how effective your social media strategy is performing. This can include how many people liked, viewed, shared or commented on your content.

Metrics are also key in revealing your ROI, and finding downward trends that could highlight a need for change within your social media strategy.

The Harris Poll report surveyed over 750 leaders in the social media marketing sector and found that 90% of leaders agreed that their company’s success was heavily dependent on how effectively they use social media data and insights to inform their business strategy.

This article will highlight the social media metrics that we deem essential for your business growth, and how you can use specific metrics depending on your unique goals.

Metrics That Matter

What is Reach in Social Media?

Social media reach is the number of people your social post has reached, and it is a useful tool to understand WHO your content is being seen by and therefore creating an opportunity to engage with.

To put it into tangible terms: you post a reel on your business’s Instagram page which has 500 followers. If half of your followers see the reel, then you’d have a reach of 250. If an additional 20 people share your reel with someone else, and 30 people find your reel through a hashtag you included in the caption, then you’d have an overall reach of 300.

Reach is an essential metric because it shows you how many people your content is reaching and helps you see how effective a particular post or campaign is. If a social media post has a bigger reach than a previous one, it is important to understand WHY this is, so you can change your social media strategy accordingly.

Knowing how to best reach more of your target audience will help improve your overall engagement and increase the chances of the right people interacting with your business.

What are Impressions in Social Media?

Impressions slightly differ from reach and are the number of times your social media content was seen. It can include several views from just one user, so this figure can often be higher than reach.

On social platforms like LinkedIn, you are able to view your impressions for any articles or posts you make. This accounts for the number of times your social post was displayed on a screen. It is an estimate, so don’t take this figure too literally, but it is still a great way to gain some insight into how your content is leaving an impression on people.

If you observe that your impressions are significantly higher than your reach, this means people may be re-visiting your post – this is a positive, you want as many eyes on your posts as possible! All this means is that your content is memorable to your target audience.

What’s the Difference Between Reach & Impressions?

Both reach and impressions are imperative metrics in building brand awareness and reaching your relevant audience. The metric you focus more closely on may differ depending on your business goals.

For example, if forming a loyal customer base and repeat purchases are your goal, then it might be more important to prioritise impressions over reach. By viewing your post multiple times, it means that the content resonated with viewers, therefore they may be more likely to purchase from you.

On the other hand, if your objective is to boost your brand visibility and grow a larger audience, then reach might be more important as a metric. This all again depends on your own unique business goals.

What is Audience Growth Rate in Social Media Metrics?

Audience growth rate is a metric that measures how many followers your brand has gained over a set period of time. This can be calculated by tracking the number of new followers over a specific period, and dividing this number by your total following, then multiplying by 100 for the percentage.

This rate independently won’t tell you much, but it can be useful when seeing what types of content or campaigns prove ROI. 

To justify this, you’re more likely to follow someone after seeing an interesting or thought-provoking piece of content. Following can help to build brand awareness, however, remember that the RIGHT audience is also key to your growth.

What is Engagement Rate in Social Media Metrics?

Engagement rate refers to actions like comments, shares, likes and reactions your content receives. This can be calculated in relation to the number of followers you have, but it should be considered that not all your followers will see every post (pesky algorithm). There may also be engagement with your post from people that don’t follow you.

There are a few different ways to calculate the engagement rate, but one way is to divide the total number of interactions with your content (e.g. likes, shares, comments, saves, depending on the platform) by your total number of followers and then multiply by 100 for the percentage. This calculation shows an engagement percentage that is independent of your follower count.

Think about when you’re looking through your social media feeds, you’re more likely to save, or send a post to a friend if the content is something you enjoyed reading or if it aligned with your values. This social metric is therefore a more honest assessment of how high quality your content is.

The higher your engagement rate is for a particular post, the better your content creation probably connected with your target audience. This can help to direct your social media strategy to see what works to create a better engagement rate, and what doesn’t work so well for your business growth.

What is Click-Through Rate (CTR) in Social Media Metrics?

This measure shows you how frequently people click any links from one of your social posts to go to any additional business content; for example, this could be a link to an article, or your website. If you’re scrolling through your social feed and you see an enticing caption/video/hook from a company, then aren’t you more likely to either read more, or explore their website?

This metric is a great tool to help you analyse what type of content is more compelling in leading individuals to further interact with your business. Subsequently, the CTR can be fundamental in understanding and altering your social media strategy.

Key Takeaways

Hopefully this article was able to demonstrate some key social metrics that you can use to strategise your business growth. Furthermore, it’s important to not only use these metrics but also UNDERSTAND how different ones can be tailored to your use.

At the start of a campaign, it is important to decide which metrics would be relevant for your social media goals. Creating benchmarks is a great way to see the progression and impact of certain content styles and types. This can then dictate the direction of your social media strategy in the future.

With the right guidance and advice from experts in the field, you can build your brand awareness using social media. Logic Design are professionals in what we do, helping to grow businesses with marketing strategies tailored to client’s needs. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you. Visit our contact page, give us a call on 01473 934050 or email us at hello@logicdesign.co.uk.