Top 4 Social Media Metrics to Monitor
Taking on social media marketing for your business can be an overwhelming task even from a creative and consistent posting standpoint. Then add on top of that the vast amount of social media metrics that each platform provides, and it’s enough to make your head spin!
While it’s great to take a long hard look at all the data related to your social accounts, these are the top four metrics we recommend keeping an eye on to gauge whether your accounts are thriving.
- Engagement
Engagement is a word often times tossed around but not well understood. Engagement is defined, according to Facebook, as the number of times a person has engaged with your posts through likes, comments, shares and more. This means interaction. Are people liking, sharing or commenting on your posts? If so, then great! This means your content is resonating with your audience. If you notice a gradual decrease in your engagement number each month then it may be time to reevaluate your content. Interested in learning more about engagement? Sprout Social has a great article that breaks it down in easy to understand terms. You can read it here.
- Impressions
Impressions are described as the number of times your content is displayed on the social media platform, regardless if it was clicked on or not. For example, if you post an article about your latest product to your Facebook account and someone likes it (engagement!), it will then appear in the newsfeed of that individual’s friends. Therefore, not only has it appeared on your follower’s newsfeed, but has now also appeared on their friend’s newsfeed. This magnifies the amount of times it was displayed and hence increases impressions.
- Reach
Often confused with impressions,, reach is the total number of unique people who have seen your content. In the example noted above, that post has definitely reached one person (the one that liked it), but then potentially reached that individual’s friends after he/she liked the post, so the reach would be the number of unique people it also reached. Think about it this way: your post could have multiple impressions per each unique individual that is on Facebook. Therefore your impressions are higher than your reach.
- Follows/Unfollows
This seems like an obvious one, but is crucial to identifying whether the content you’re creating and posting is relevant to your audience. If you notice a regular stream of unfollows, then it may be time to adjust your content strategy because it’s not resonating with your audience.
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If you’re feeling overwhelmed with your social media reporting it’s important to approach it one step at a time. Learning the correct definitions of commonly used social lingo will not only help you better understand the success of your business pages, but will also help you adjust your social media strategy to cater the best content to your audience.
Social media management is a full-time job! If you’re dedicated to providing information and service to your customers’ through social media, but are struggling with the best strategy, reach out to us for more information on our GoSocial services. You can learn more about them here.