Social media is one of the major outlets for marketing your brand. Approximately 54% of social browsers use their platform of choice to research products. People are already searching for great brands to connect with, so a successful social media campaign can supercharge your growth. Social media campaigns give you a wealth of data to work with. You can use these key metrics to learn more about your customers and how they feel about your brand. Some types of data are more valuable than others.
When launching your next social media campaign, you need to know which key metrics to follow.
In 2022, 4.62 billion people will use at least one social media platform, more than half the world’s population. Your social media manager needs to track impressions, which is the number of times users see your content.
The metric is simple enough to calculate. If you have 1,000 followers and each follower sees your content three times, you have 3,000 impressions.
Impressions measure your brand’s potency in getting your content in front of your audience. Exposing your brand to your target market multiple times increases awareness and makes it more likely they will stop and click.
Reach is one of the most straightforward key metrics of all. It’s the number of users who see your content. Reach doesn’t differentiate between unique views and users who see your content more than once.
Working out where to find a social media manager who understands the value of reach is crucial. While it may not be as relevant as clicks or conversions, reach denotes how many people you are connecting with in total. Ensure you review the social media proposal template thoroughly before choosing a social media manager.
To get more followers and customers, you need to be able to reach new users, and this metric shows whether you’re being successful in that endeavor.
Growth is important. Explosive growth shows that your campaign has been a roaring success. Consistent growth rates indicate constant success with every new campaign.
Rather than looking at your follower count, the audience growth rate allows you to set clear goals for your campaign.
A business that commits itself to increasing its follower count by 50% over the next six months is better positioned to analyze and reflect than a business that wants 1,000 new followers over an undefined period.
The audience growth rate also shows which content is having an impact. If your reach and impressions are rising, but your audience growth rate isn’t, your business’s content is failing to connect.
Someone who sees your content and does nothing is of no value to your brand. Engagement measures everything from likes to comments and shares. High engagement rates show that you’re striking a chord with your audience.
Ad spend on social media is expected to reach over $173 million in 2022, and much of it goes toward increasing your engagement rates.
High engagement rates are also crucial for massaging social media algorithms. Feeds with higher engagement rates are more likely to be shown at the top of a user’s feed because it signals that people like what they see.
Engagement is good, but pure engagement doesn’t translate to more revenue for your company. The click-through rate shows that your target audience clicks on your content and reaches your website.
Better click-through rates show that you are not only providing great content but that you’re intriguing your target market enough for them to want to learn more about your brand.
However, it’s also vital to ensure that this same quality content leads to more quality content.
If someone bounces from a page, they have landed on a page and not clicked through to any other pages. It indicates a problem with the content they’ve landed on after clicking through from your social media feed.
But what is an optimal bounce rate?
According to social media guru Neil Schaffer, an optimal bounce rate lands between 36% and 40%. Anything higher means you have work to do.
Avoid comparing your bounce rates on Google with social media bounce rates. The latter will always be higher, and the parameters of success differ.
How long are your user's spending on your page?
If you’ve linked to a long landing page consisting of a few thousand words and your average time on page is 30 seconds, your users are not engaged when visiting your website. High bounce rates and low average time on page mean you have work to do.
Tools like Google Analytics can help you track this metric.
Your cost-per-click is how much money it costs you to get someone to click on your ad. Non-converting traffic and high cost-per-click rates means that you need to adjust your strategy because your current campaign is doing nothing but losing you money.
There’s no such thing as an optimal cost-per-click rate. It differs by niche and also depends on what your goals are. Some businesses are perfectly willing to run with high costs because they sell big-ticket items.
However, on a base level, you will be calculating your ROI in the following way:
If you invested $1,000 in an ad campaign and you have managed to link $2,000 in sales to that campaign, you have an ROI of 100%.
Of course, not every campaign is designed for direct sales. Sometimes, you might run a campaign simply to raise awareness or gain more followers. Define your goals from the outset and determine what your targets are.
Tracking your social media key metrics can happen using any number of tools. More and more businesses are choosing to outsource the hard work of gathering and interpreting data with the help of a social media manager.
Outsourcing the job of social media marketing can free up your personnel to focus on other aspects of your business, thus saving time and gaining expertise. Are you considering outsourcing your social media to an expert?
