Are you paying attention to the right social media metrics?
Social media marketing can help you achieve your business goals, but it’s important to track your social media metrics to understand what’s working and what’s not.
About 43 percent of consumers increased their social media use to discover new products.
Of course, the best metrics to track on social media relate to your specific goals. But in general, the following are the 26 top metrics to track, based on social media platforms.
Facebook is the largest social media network, with nearly 3 billion monthly active users as of July 2022. Of course, the sheer size of the audience makes it a favorite platform for marketers. But even though it’s popular, it’s also easy to feel overwhelmed when tracking your Facebook performance metrics. Here are five social media metrics you should track on Facebook:
- Reach and impressions, which are the number of unique users who saw your content and the number of total times your content was seen (regardless of whether one user saw it multiple times), respectively. Tracking these numbers gives you a sense of how large of an audience you’re reaching and can help give context to other Facebook metrics.
- Likes and reactions, which are a form of engagement that give users the opportunity to express their support for a page or a post. “Likes” used to refer to interactions with both Facebook pages and posts but Facebook has since expanded the options to engage with posts. These “reactions” span from “angry” to “love.” They act as social proof that your audience is connecting with your content, and Facebook uses them as a ranking signal to potentially show that content to more users in their news feeds. You also can get a sense of user sentiment about your content by monitoring your post reactions.
- Video views, which reflect when a video is played for at least three seconds. To count as a video view, the video needs to be 100 percent on screen in desktop browser mode and at least 50 percent on screen on mobile devices. Within the video-view metric, Facebook offers 3-second video views (when a user paused for your video but did not complete it), 1-minute video views (when a user watches for a significant period of time) and total minutes viewed. This is an important metric to monitor to understand how your video content is performing.
- Link clicks, which happen any time a user clicks an external link in your post to access more content. This could be to your website or another web page or site. This differs slightly with Facebook ads, where a traditional link click is called an outbound click and “link clicks” refer to clicks a user has made but still stays within the Facebook platform (such as filling out a form from a lead-generation ad but is still on Facebook). If your goal is to drive traffic to your website or someplace else, this metric reflects your success in those efforts.
- Comments and shares, which refer to the number of replies users have published on your content and the number of times users have sent your post to others on Facebook Messenger or shared on their own feeds. This acts as social proof that users are connecting with your content. It’s a bigger interaction than a like/reaction. You also can gauge user sentiment from comments on your posts.
Dive deeper into understanding your metrics on Facebook.
A visual-first platform owned by Facebook, Instagram now is the fourth most-used social media platform, with 1.22 billion monthly active users. It’s also particularly popular for consumers 34 years old and younger. Here are four metrics you should track on Instagram:
- Impressions, which are the number of times your content is seen by users who are logged into Instagram, even if a user saw it multiple times. This metric shows how effective your content is at getting the attention of your audience and beyond. It also helps give context to other metrics on Instagram.
- Reach, which is the estimated number of unique users (who are logged into Instagram) that saw your content. This metric is about users, not views, but will show you how large your audience actually is and can help give context to other metrics.
- Video plays, which are the number of times your video or reel was played by an Instagram user. Keep in mind that because many videos are short and play in a loop automatically, this metric can be higher than expected based on that content’s reach. It’s important to gauge whether all your video efforts are paying off.
- Post interactions, which are the number of likes, saves, comments and shares on any particular post. This metric does not include deleted interactions. To include deleted interactions, look at “content interactions” instead. This is all about understanding how well your content is connecting with your audience and can actually help boost your impressions and reach within the Instagram algorithm.
Dive deeper into understanding your metrics on Instagram.
A micro-blogging social network, Twitter has about 396.5 million users globally. About 92 percent of the content on Twitter is posted by 10 percent of its users. So, while Twitter might not be the most popular social media network, it has a very engaged section of its users. Here are four metrics you should track on Twitter:
- Impressions, which are the number of times your tweet appeared on screen, whether that’s through a user’s timeline or via a hashtag. You can view this metric for your account as a whole and for individual tweets. This metric can give you a sense of how many users viewed your content.
- Engagement, which is the number of times users have retweeted, quoted, replied to, liked or clicked within your tweet. This metric shows how effective your content is.
- Link clicks, which are any click on a URL or card within your tweet. If your goal is to drive traffic to your website or somewhere else, this metric can show how successful your efforts are.
- Profile visits, which reflect the number of users who visited your profile either through a tweet, search or other ways. This metric indicates the number of users who want to learn more about you, whether they ultimately follow you or not.
Dive deeper into understanding your metrics on Twitter.
YouTube
A video-only social networking and broadcasting platform owned by Google, YouTube has more than 2.5 billion active monthly users. If you’re already creating video content, you definitely want to create a YouTube presence and share it there as well. Here are three metrics you should track on YouTube:
- Total watch time, which equals the total amount of time that all users have spent watching your video. This metric can help indicate how well your content is connecting with users. You also can see how total watch time compares between your subscribers and non-subscribers for more understanding.
- Video views, which is defined by Google to be “the number of legitimate views for your channel or videos.” This can refer to views that users initiate, such as by searching or clicking on a thumbnail. This metric can reveal how compelling your video is to potential viewers.
- Engagement, which is any interaction with your content beyond accessing it, such as likes, dislikes, views and comments. This metric shows how well your content connects with your audience.
Check out our 20 tips to grow your YouTube subscribers.
TikTok
Seemingly the “new kid on the block” in terms of rising popularity, short-form-video platform TikTok has a particularly large audience among Gen Z and Millennials. Depending on whether this younger demographic is part of your target audience, you may want to consider a presence on TikTok. Here are four metrics you should track on TikTok:
- Total time watched, which is the cumulative amount of time users spent watching your video. You’ll only see this for individual videos. However, by regularly monitoring this metric, you’ll see how successful new video content is.
- Engagement, which is how users interact with your content. This gives you a sense of how effectively your content is connecting with users. The higher the engagement, the higher your reach will probably be.
- Video views, which are the number of times users played your video. As soon as a video begins to play, that counts as a video view (unlike some other social media platforms). This metric also counts repeat plays, including video loops. Video views essentially act like impressions on TikTok, so you can see how large of an audience you’re reaching.
- Hashtag performance, which reflects how many viewers found your video through a particular hashtag. This is important because the hashtags you use on your videos can impact your view count and engagement. Using the right hashtag matters. Tracking this metric will help you make more strategic decisions along the way and potentially attract more viewers.
Check out our 15 tips to market your brand on TikTok.
With more than 830 million users in more than 200 countries and territories, LinkedIn is the largest social network for professionals. The platform is definitely a must for B2B (business-to-business) marketers. Here are three metrics you should track on LinkedIn:
- Impressions and unique impressions, which are the number of times at least 50 percent of your post was visible on screen for a logged-in LinkedIn user for at least 300 milliseconds and the number of times your post was visible to the same standard for unique users, respectively. These metrics show the size of your audience and how visible your content is to them.
- Engagements, which reflects video views, clicks, reactions, comments, shares and more in a section on LinkedIn called Update Engagements. You’ll get a sense of how well your content is connecting with your audience through this metric.
- Engagement rate, which is based on the following formula: number of interactions plus number of clicks plus number of followers acquired divided by number of impressions. This metric shows the percentage of impressions that result in engagement actions. Of course, the higher that percentage, the more effective your post is.
See our six tips to be more effective with your marketing on LinkedIn. Plus, check out the six biggest mistakes businesses make on LinkedIn so that you can avoid them.
Founded in 2009, Pinterest currently has about 478 million monthly active users. Think of Pinterest as a visual search engine, housing tons of photos, graphics, links and inspiration for nearly anything you might want to find. Yes, it’s popular for recipes and DIY projects, but there really is more to it than that. Here are XX metrics you should track on Pinterest:
- Impressions, which show the number of times your pins have appeared on screen, regardless of whether a user clicked to open it or not. This metric is available on an account level or by individual pin, and it helps illustrate how effectively your content is reaching an audience. It also can help provide context for other metrics.
- Engagement, which is defined by Pinterest as the number of “saves, pin clicks, outbound clicks, carousel card swipes, secondary creative (collections) clicks and Idea Pin foward/backward swipes.” In the simplest sense, Pinterest is saying that engagement is any time a user interacts with your pin in any way instead of scrolling past it. Monitoring this metric helps you understand how well your content is connecting with your audience.
- Outbound clicks, which are the number of times a user clicked on an outbound link (to your website, for example) from your pin. This metric matters is one of your goals is to drive traffic to your website or another web page outside of Pinterest.
Check out our six expert tips for marketing on Pinterest.
In conclusion
Monitoring your social media performance is imperative if you want to achieve your marketing goals. The challenge can be navigating so much data across platforms. Keep your goals in mind, as well as these top social media metrics. That way, you can focus on the most important information for your campaigns.
As you begin to drill into your top social media metrics, consider optimizing your digital marketing process. This includes such features as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.
