Social media metrics allow you to measure the success of campaigns and gauge the effectiveness of your overall social media strategy. Understanding how your social media activities affect your bottom line however, can be difficult to measure and quantify. Just in case you weren’t confused enough there seems to be a new metric added every week, so what should you be tracking?
Every social media platform has its own native analytics. If your budget allows, it may be worth investing in an analytics tool to help you condense your data. Ultimately, the type of social media metrics you choose to place the greatest emphasis on will vary depending on your overall marketing goals. However, there are key metrics nearly all businesses should keep an eye on, which help to draw traffic to your site, increase revenue and boost brand awareness.
Understanding Reach and Impressions
If your goal is to raise brand awareness, then analysing your reach and impressions are both important ways to determine how many people are seeing your content. Though similar, reach and impressions are not the same thing.
Reach is the total number of people who see your content. Impressions reflect how many times your content has been displayed.
The same piece of content can be viewed multiple times by the same person. Each time that piece of content is seen, it is counted as an impression. A person does not have to engage with a post for it to count as a reach or an impression.
Unfortunately, most of your followers will not see every post you publish. In fact, Instagram’s latest algorithm update reportedly means that only about 10% of your audience will see your organic content.
However, if your reach and impressions numbers are relatively high but your engagement is low, this could be an indication that it is time to revise your overall content strategy.
Strategies for increasing your reach on Instagram
- Diversify your content mediums Carousels on Instagram are often displayed numerous times when a person does not interact the first time. Therefore, if you are trying to boost your reach, try adding more carousel posts to your social media feed. Instagram also reportedly rewards users who regularly post Reels, IGTV, videos, Instagram lives and Stories.
- Geo tag to popular locations. Take advantage of Instagram’s geotag feature and tag popular spots that are relevant to your business. When people search for the location you have tagged, your post will appear, therefore increasing your reach and brand awareness.
- Use unique hashtags. Carefully selected hashtags will increase your reach. Using the samehashtags on each post may save you time, but Instagram may view this as spam and may mistake you for a bot. Therefore, it is important to use unique hashtags specifically related to each individual post.
- Prime your feed before posting. Don’t forget to be social on social media. Take the time to like, comment and engage with other posts and pages. This should be done prior to and after posting on your own channel.
Engagement
Engagement is a broad umbrella term that refers to the interaction on your channel. Social media engagement metrics are calculated slightly differently, depending on the platform.
Why engagement is important
Understanding what type of posts evoke the highest level of engagement will help you plan your content strategies to align with the interests of your target audience.
You can use the data from your organic content to inform paid campaigns that are more likely to offer a ROI (return on investment).
A high level of engagement is often valued over “vanity” metrics, such as the number of followers or “likes” a social media account has. Engagement rates are often considered a vital component of an influencer media kit, as they represent the number of people who are genuinely interested in your brand.
A low level of engagement is generally an indication that you need to revise your editorial strategy. This means adapting the use of imagery, captions, tone of voice or call-to-action.
Social Media Engagement Metrics
There are different means and methods of calculating engagement. We’ll run through a few below.
Total engagement Represents a tally of actions taken such a likes, favourites, reactions, comments, shares, views and retweets. To determine the effectiveness of your social media strategy, you can track your total engagement weekly or monthly. By doing so, you can establish whether your total engagement has increased or decreased over time.
Engagement rate post by follower This represents the amount of interactions per post divided by your total number of likes or followers. Most external analytics platforms will calculate this for you. Several industry platforms release annual reports which enable you to see how you compare to others in your industry. A recent report by Rival IQ revealed that the average engagement rate for the food and beverage industry on Instagram was 1.18%
Engagement rate post by reach: This is calculated as the number of interactions divided by the total reach of a post. It is considered an accurate representation of your engagement levels, because your posts will not be seen by every person in your follower list.
Saves
Instagram “saves” is not new but as we quell our obsession with “likes”, the importance of measuring this feature has increased. We may consider a “save” to be a super like. Clicking the bookmark icon on the bottom right hand corner of each post places it within a saved collection, therefore making it easy to find again. The more saves a post attracts, the more it will be shown in other feeds.
Kate Cook is a digital marketing strategist and founder of spt agency. An organisation dedicated to unmasking the bewildering world of online marketing. Kate suggests that marketers and business owners should emphasise “sticky” metrics. This is content that is engineered to be shared and created with the purpose of driving engagement. Kate argues that the amount of “saves and DM’s are key metrics to examine if you’re using Instagram to connect with your audience and drive leads for your business.”
Kate also explains that “If you’re running an ecommerce store – looking at Instagram shopping product tags would be the key metrics for you to keep an eye on.” Brands may choose to include counting “saves” as part of their engagement rate calculations.
Outsourcing your social media analytics
Wading through the waters of social media metrics may not be for everyone. If you are drowning in data, you could consider outsourcing your analytics to an independent agency. It is important however, not to hand over the keys to your digital kingdom without ensuring a degree of accountability.
According to Kate, the key question to ask when interviewing a new agency is “tell me how you report on the effectiveness on your strategies to your clients?”
For those who find data analysis confusing and overwhelming, Kate suggests that having a shared dashboard and frequent meetings with a core agenda of analysing the effectiveness of strategies is the key. “I always like to make sure that we put ‘bad news stories’ on the agenda as well as the ‘good news stories’. We want to know what’s NOT working just as much as what is, so we can work out what to dial down and where to reallocate that spend for improved performance.”
While this article aims to demystify the world of social media metrics, the talented Creative Little Soul team are at the helm to offer up their skills should you need an extra set of hands. Get in touch if you’d like to chat further.