Katie Coen

We all use social media. We post pictures with friends and family, promote things we like and are passionate about, and interact with others. But social media isn’t all fun and games. Businesses use social media to build their brand and promote and sell their products. They hire professional social media managers and analysts to run their accounts and help them get the most reach, engagement, and positive feedback. 

Metrics, or key performance indicators, are the basis for the analysis social media managers use. Metrics are types of data used to track success on social media platforms. They can be tracked on social media management platforms, like Buffer and Later. These applications lay out statistics about an account’s growth, engagement, impressions, reach, and more.

Social media managers must think about certain metrics that will guide them to success. They answer the following questions by naming metrics that can be used to help achieve their goals.

Who is my audience?

Engagement is the metric that can help answer this question. It measures the interaction of a brand with users through the number of likes, favorites, shares, comments, and messages. By looking deeper into these engagements and the profiles that make them, a social media manager can learn about their audience and what they like. Social media management tools also give extensive information on demographics including their age, gender, where they are viewing from, etc. 

Am I doing better than my competitors?

Measuring and comparing what competitors are doing is essential to being successful online. Brands want to keep up with trends and find ways to be unique. Growth rate is a percentage that shows how quickly your audience is growing over a set period of time. It’s measuring the metric of growth, or the number of followers an account has. Brands can compare how fast they are growing with their competitors to gauge who is doing better and help them improve.

Engagement rate can also track the competition. Brands can find out who is getting more engagement and can track the progress to see who is more successful overtime. 

In addition, sentiment can help track how people are feeling about competitive brands. It shows how people think about a brand. They want to leave a positive effect on users and can look at how users feel about a competitor. A net sentiment score and brand passion index can show how users feel about a brand and compares it to competitors.

What are people saying about my brand?

Sentiment is the biggest descriptor of what people are saying about a brand. Social media managers can look at comments, feedback, brand mentions, and reviews to see how people are reacting to their posts and their products in general. Professionals use sentiment analysis metrics to see the effectiveness of their account and find areas to improve. 

When is the best time to publish?

The metric that answers this question is also engagement. Social media managers can track the amount of likes, comments, and shares at any given time and see when their followers and viewers are the most active. Social media management tools can help with posting at optimal times. Many networks have calendars and allow you to schedule a post.

Which content does my audience enjoy the most?

Engagement again! The content with the most shares, comments, and likes is clearly what is preferred by the audience. 

Impressions can also indicate what users are enjoying. They are metrics showing how often someone will see a piece of content. In theory, if a user likes content, they will come back and look at it again. This metric is a great indicator of how popular posts are. 

In addition, reach shows how many people see a post. If one post has more views, it is an indicator that a wider audience likes it.

Which social media network is the best for my brand?

Depending on the brand and what they are trying to accomplish, different social media platforms can be used. The audience of certain platforms varies drastically. For example, Facebook is targeted at older audiences, while Instagram is used by more young people. 

If the growth rate and engagement rates are higher on certain platforms, those are the ones a brand should focus on. This way they can allot their resources where they will find the most success. 

Conversion rate is another metric that helps here. It is data that shows how well a campaign is convincing people to take action. This can be anything from making a purchase to signing up for a newsletter. If one platform is directing the most people to take action, it should be the focus. 

How can I have a better performance on social media?

This is the golden question. All brands want to do well on social media. They want to reach the most people, have the most followers, get positive feedback, and watch their brand grow. So, engagement rate, growth, reach, and sentiment are all key here. They can all help a brand identify patterns and use analysis to make improvements to their social media.

Resources

Hill, C. (2024, January 31). The social media metrics to track in 2023 (and why). Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-metrics/

Khan, G. F. (2018). Creating Value With Social Media Analytics: Managing, Aligning, and Mining Social Media Text, Networks, Actions, Location, Apps, Hyperlinks, Multimedia, & Search Engines Data. CreateSpace.

Leonard, K. (2023, August 4). 13 essential social media metrics in 2024. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/social-media-metrics/

Thony, S. (2024). Module 2: Social Media Metrics. Lecture.