6 Social Media Metrics you should pay attention to

Social media metrics as a niche really can be a bit confusing. For every successful business, there are basic metrics that need to be monitored so as to match them with the aim and objectives of the business. However, it is best to note that each social media platform has its own metrics and the names might even differ from one another but if you want to know all about campaign tracking and goal settings, keep reading.

To start with, what are social media metrics? Social media metrics are those measures that help you track the rate at which your business is moving. This is in terms of how well your campaigns perform, how people are receiving your business online which would determine the continuous success of your business. Every social media metric is greatly influenced by the goals a business aims to achieve on social media. This is why it is important to find a related metric for every goal and this will help you determine whether your social strategy is working or not. If your business goal is to increase conversions, your social media goal then becomes increasing conversion from visitors to your page or website (as the case may be), using posts as a part of your strategy. As mentioned earlier, each social media platform has its own method of analysing growth - analytics. If you are using Facebook, the "Insights" tab is the place you should check, for Pinterest and Instagram, you have to use business accounts before you can access your data while for Twitter, you have to check the "Twitter Analytics" to see your data.

• Engagement

One thing you have to pay attention to as an online business owner is the level of engagement you get on your posts either on your page or website. Talking about engagement, it simply is about the number of people interacting with your account (page or website) and how often this happens. The term "engagement" is like an umbrella that had under it smaller engagement metrics which includes comments, shares, likes, and in some cases, retweets (if using Twitter). If you have a high rate of engagement, this shows that your audience is active.

• Impressions and Reach

These are two social media metrics always used and mentioned as one. Although both are essentially important to track how well your brand is doing online, there is a difference between Impressions and Reach.

The “Impressions” metric simply has to do with the number of times a post shows up in a person's timeline while Reach on the other hand is the number of special or unique accounts or viewers that have seen the post. Usually, these "unique" accounts are a sum of your follower count and accounts that shared the post's follower counts.

Impressions as a metric show one thing about how well your posts can do on social media, you have to use this in addition to all other metrics. This, however, is based on the goals you have for your business. 

• Volume

This is a metric usually used in PR or as a part of a paid advertising campaign. This shows how well your brand is doing in the online circle. Simply put, this metric will show you how many people are talking, about your business online in comparison to your competitors. Constantly improving on the volume is a continuous process as its progress or success as the case may be measured over time.

• Conversion and Referrals

This metric is best used by companies and businesses with e-commerce platforms, websites and others related. This is because referrals and conversion are often measured and used by marketing and sales goals. Hence, if one of your business goals is to drive sales through marketing, this metric is for you. In order to track this, you will need a publishing strategy which uses a website traffic analytics program (Google Analytics) and UTM tracking. 

Referrals simply have to do with how a potential buyer or an audience gets to your page so when using such analytics, you'll see the referral method broken down into various sections (based on how many social media platforms you used to run ads). Conversions have to do with when a customer buys something from your page. There are different types of conversions, one of which is "social conversion". Social conversion basically means that the buyer visited your page or website from a social media platform and bought something from the same visit. For this to work, you have to prioritise and monitor your ads well so as to track improvement.

• Response Time and Rate

It has to do with how well and fast your customer support relates and responds to customers. For all the aforementioned metrics to work properly, you have to ensure that your customers get the best treatment and overall impressive experience.