Measuring the success of your social media activity can take a while to master, as this is still relatively new territory for many companies. Social media channels tend to deploy varying touchpoints for engagement, which means the way you measure this will differ across all the channels you use for your marketing. To help make it simpler, we’ve gathered together the engagement metrics you should know about over and above simple likes.
Tracking Your Audience Engagement
Keeping track of where your audience are coming from, and how engaged they are with the content you are producing, helps you stay on track with producing and sharing posts which appeal to your followers. There are various ways to give your engagement a boost, some of which require you to engage with influencers on social media who appear to have an interest in your company.
Audience Growth Rate
This is an essential metric to keep a watchful eye on, as a healthy social media presence should lead to a growth in followers rather than their depletion. This is one of the easier metrics to monitor, as your audience size will be easily accessible via your social media account. Crucially however, you should remember to check this metric at regular intervals to keep track of how this number is evolving over time. This could be monthly, weekly or even more frequently if tracking a campaign aimed at growing your numbers – but try and check the data at the same time during each session for more accuracy.
Follower Ratio
Another important metric involves tracking how many accounts you follow vs. how many accounts follow you. If you have more followers than accounts you personally follow, that suggests you are producing content which has real value for your audience and a healthy level of engagement. You can trace this metric manually via most social media platforms. If you engage with influencers on social platforms, it will help you build your following through association.
Likes/Shares Per Post
This metric encompasses all the ways your audience can visibly demonstrate they have enjoyed a post. To track your likes per post, measure how many people have liked your posts over a set period, before dividing the number by how many posts you have produced. An engaged following should be showing your content resonates with them. Sharing content is also important for gaging whether your audience wants to shout about your content, and if these instances are growing, then this metric is generally in good shape.
Clicks Per Post
This is a handy metric for monitoring how many people are taking their engagement with your content outside of the social space and clicking through to your website, landing page or content itself. All social media engagement ultimately ties back to trying to improve your content resonance with your target audience, and that engagement comes full circle back to your site. Measuring clicks per post helps you to determine the likely traffic from your social media work, which can be improved upon over time.
