5 Social Media KPIs You Shouldn’t Ignore

Updated July 12th, 2022

How do you measure the success of a social media campaign?

Many businesses nowadays leverage social media platforms. The main reason is that social media is a fine addition to your marketing efforts because it allows you to directly engage with your target audience. Not only that but social media can improve your online visibility, awareness and exposure on the market. However, running a social media marketing campaign isn’t as simple as many business owners believe it to be.

Social media is in fact quite demanding because you have to do things the way your audience prefers it, which is the factor most commonly ignored by a lot of companies. How do you know if your social media efforts are actually producing viable results? It’s simple; you measure the important KPIs (key performance indicators). Social media metrics can show you how your strategies and campaigns are performing but only if you’ve set clear goals beforehand. That being said, here are a few social media KPIs you shouldn’t ignore.

Social follower count

This is an important social media KPI if you want to know more about your exposure on social media platforms. Follower count allows you to determine the current number of followers you have on each social network your company has a presence on, such as Facebook, Twitter and so on. In addition, this KPI allows you to measure whether the number of followers is increasing or decreasing over time.

For instance, this is crucial if you want to determine if your content is efficient at capturing your audience members’ attention. Every company prefers to grow their social following because it shows that their visibility online is improving. However, if this metric isn’t showing the numbers you want to see, then perhaps it’s time to improve your efforts.

Engagement

Measuring the engagement KPI on your social media pages is important. This metric may not necessarily show how loyal your audience is or their willingness to make purchases but it does portray the performance of your social media efforts, as well as you the effectiveness of the content you publish. The main factors to focus on when measuring engagement levels are likes, shares, comments, visits, clicks and so on.

If your posts, for example, manage to go viral over social media, it means you’ve managed to ensure pretty high levels of engagement. This metric also shows how your audience is interacting with your content and which type of content is driving the best results in terms of engagement. This information can help you improve your efforts for content marketing strategies you’re planning on implementing.

Social mentions

Social mentions are one of the most important KPIs you shouldn’t ignore. The main reason this metric is essential is that it shows you just how often people are mentioning your company, why and in what sentiment. In other words, social mention monitoring tools can give you a perspective on how your audience, as well as the overall consumer base, perceives your brand.

That way, you can specify keywords you want to track and be notified every time someone mentions them. This information can help with improving your marketing efforts on social media, should you choose to act upon audience feedback. Not only that but this metric is also beneficial for reputation management in case someone starts posting negative comments and reviews about your brand.

Conversion rates and traffic

It’s no secret that many companies leverage social media platforms, in order to generate more qualified leads and improve their website traffic. If your social media campaign shares this purpose, you’d want to track conversions and web traffic KPIs. Measuring traffic isn’t that difficult. You must focus on referral traffic from each social media network, in order to determine just how many leads you manage to drive to your website.

As for the conversions, a Google Analytics tool, for instance, can help you measure specific conversion. The way it works is that your analytics tool allows you to assign specific goals for your conversions, also known as goal conversion rate (GCR). You can determine how many leads converted by monitoring their actions on your website or app. That way, you can even measure the ROI from your social media marketing campaign.

Share of voice

The share of voice KPI can help you gain insight into your own reputation, as well as the reputation of your competitors. As mentioned before, social mentions are crucial for determining how your audience perceives you.

Share of voice is a similar metric, only this time you compare how the audience perceives you vs. how the audience perceives your competition. This metric is part of your competitive analysis. And as with any competitive analysis, the key is not to copy your competition’s efforts but instead learn from their success, in order to improve your own efforts and gain a competitive advantage.

Managing your social media presence and marketing efforts can be a daunting task. However, if you focus on measuring result by monitoring essential KPIs, you’ll have a valuable insight into your own performance on social media. That way, it becomes easier to improve your efforts and develop strategies that will drive actionable results for your company.