The Top 8 Social Media Metrics for Advertisers

Author: Margot da Cunha / Source: Business 2 Community

Let’s face it: If you’re running paid campaigns on social media, your boss is always going to be asking you about your social media metrics. “Are they improving?” “What are we tracking?” “What should we be tracking?” “Why?”

If all of these questions are making your head spin, you are not alone! With so many metrics out there, it can hard to decipher which ones are most critical to monitor.

For online advertisers, tracking your social media performance isn’t just important to your boss, it should be important to you too. Having a handle on the metrics that matter is not only going to make you look smart at work, it’s going to help you improve your social media advertising strategy so you can grow your fan base and potentially even your business through the power of social media marketing.

With the majority of consumers spending several hours a day on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, it is key to have an effective strategy that is continuously evolving as the platforms release new features, tools, and improvements. The beast of social media is ever-changing, so your strategy needs to be as well. Tracking critical metrics effectively is the first step to taking over the social world, impressing your boss, and earning that raise you’ve been eyeing.

If you’re running paid campaigns on social media, here are the top eight social media metrics that you need to be tracking, as well as tips on how to track them and why you should be. Without further ado, let’s dive in!

#1: Social Media Reach

What Is Reach in Social Media?

Reach is a measure to how many people your brand and content are getting in front of. You can think of reach simply as the number of eyes your social media presence is exposed to. Of course, the more eyes the better, and while reach does not always paint the full picture, it is a critical metric to monitor.

Why Reach Matters

Reach is a top-of-funnel metric, but still a metric that every social media marketer should be closely monitoring and continuously working to improve. Strong reach is an indication of strong brand awareness, and without your brand, what are you, really? If you are able to build a recognizable, well-respected, and influential brand, the other goals you’ve set forth (like leads, subscribers, and conversions) are going to happen with more ease.

The bottom line is that if your reach is not growing, this is a problem! You spend a lot of time working on social, so ensuring you are reaching a substantial audience is key.

How to Measure Reach

You can track your reach in all your individual social media platforms. To track this metric, look at your follower growth, individual post reach, overall campaign reach, and your audience growth rate in your various social media platforms. Your campaigns should improve your reach over time.

Here’s an example of how you can track reach on Instagram through the Insights page of your profile. If this was my Instagram business account I’d be quite concerned, because as you can see my reach is down by -11 from the week before!

#2: Engagement

What Is Engagement?

Engagement is the social media metric that informs you how many people are interacting with the content you put out on social platforms. Engagement can come in several forms, such as comments, shares, likes, clicks, and saves.

Why Engagement Matters

If your reach is spot on, but your engagement is missing, this is a problem. If people are not engaging with the content you shared, then what is the point of posting it in the first place? Your social media engagement rate tell you how interested your audience is, plus what content resonates and what content does not. Then you’ll be able to tweak your social strategy based on this information. For instance, if pictures of dogs are receiving 10X more engagement then pictures of cats, you would up the dog pictures and put the cats to bed.

How to Measure Your Engagement Rate

So how do you know if your content is engaging enough? Each social media platform where you’re running ads should show you the engagement rate of each individual ad. Run and test multiple ads so that you can determine a typical engagement rate for your account. Whenever an ad gets below average engagement, change it or throw it out. When an ad gets above average engagement, keep it running and figure out how you can create that magic again.

Facebook, for example, lets you check on the engagement for each type of ad. Here are the options:

#3: Amplification Rate

The more I’ve become familiar with amplification rate, the more I’ve realized how critical this metric should be for social media marketers to track.

What is Amplification Rate?

This metric was first defined by author and digital marketing evangelist at Google Avinash Kaushik as “the rate at which your followers take your content and share it through their networks.” Basically, you can think of amplification rate as the ratio of shares per social post.

Why Amplification Rate Matters

While likes and comments are great to see, they don’t necessarily expand your reach. But when your followers amplify your content, it gets exposed to new audiences without you even having to pay for the additional exposure. A high amplification rate is a…

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