Important Social Media Metrics for Small Businesses

What are Social Media Metrics?

Building a social media strategy is no small feat. But how do you know if your campaigns were successful? That’s where social media metrics come in. Social media metrics are stats that determine the success of your social media marketing campaigns. Your business goals and corresponding social media campaign goals determine which metrics you’ll need to track.

If your goal is to increase conversions, you might start a conversions campaign on social media. This campaign would include ads, posts, product tags, and maybe partnering with influencers. To measure the success of this campaign, you’d look at social traffic and conversion rates from those posts. 

Why Do Social Media Metrics Matter?

You can’t tell how well your social media marketing efforts are doing from likes, comments, and shares alone. The right social media metrics don’t just prove to other people that your social campaigns are useful. They can also help you decide where to focus your energy and what does and doesn’t work about what you’re doing. 

The Social Funnel

The conversion funnel is the same general shape for social media campaigns, but the stages are a little different: here’s how it goes:

1.  Awareness
2. Engagement
3. Conversion
4. Advocacy
5. Customer Care

Each stage has different metrics to tell you how well you accomplished it. 

Awareness Metrics

The following metrics measure your brand awareness by revealing your current and potential audience:

Potential Reach

The potential reach measures how many people could see a post. 

Post Reach

The post reach determines how many people outside of your follower sphere have seen the post. 

Audience Growth

Audience growth is what it sounds like: how much your audience has grown. 

Social Share of Voice (SSoV)

Your SSoV tells you how many people are talking about your company compared to your competitors. This is how to calculate it: 

1. Measure every mention your brand receives.
2. Measure your competitors’ mentions during the same period of time.
3. Add those two numbers together.
4. Divide your brand mentions by the grand total.

Engagement Metrics

These metrics measure meaningful interactions with your social media ads. 

Comments

Total number of comments on a post. A lot of comments tell you that your content is engaging. 

Shares

Total number of times a post was shared. The more people share your posts, the more people outside of your followers see it and the more your audience can grow. 

Brand Mentions

Number of times users mention your brand on social media, directly or indirectly. 

Virality Rate

How do you measure how viral a post is? Divide the number of shares by the number of impressions, then multiply it by 100. 

Amplification Rate

The amplification rate tells you how well people are promoting your content.

Applause Rate

The applause rate tells you what proportion of engagements with your posts are positive. 

Average Engagement Rate

A high average engagement rate tells you that your followers are actively engaging with your content.

Conversion Metrics

These metrics determine how many of the people who see your ads are actually doing anything about it. 

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The click-through rate tells you what percentage of people who see the ad clicked on it. To calculate it, divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions, then convert that number into a percentage.  

Cost Per Click (CPC)

The cost per click tells you how far your money for an ad went. The goal is to have a low CPC. 

Cost Per Mille (CPM)

The Cost Per Mille, or cost per thousand impressions,  shows the monetary success of your ad on a larger scale. I

Referrals

Tracking referrals tells you how users arrive at your site. This isn’t just relevant to social media, but seeing social media referrals compared to other sources like organic search, emails, and search ads highlights the strengths and weaknesses of your digital marketing strategy. 

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who click on a link and leave without taking an action. The goal is to have a low one. You can view this number on Google Analytics or most other analytics tools. 

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate tells you what percentage of clicks lead to the user taking action. Calculate it by dividing the number of conversions by total clicks and converting that number to a percentage. 

Social Media Conversion Rate

Similarly, the social media conversion rate tells you what percentage of your conversions were from social media. 

Conversation Rate

The conversation rate tells you what percentage of your followers commented on a post. 

Advocacy Metrics

These metrics give you an idea of how many customers are recommending your company to people in their lives. 

Testimonials

Customer testimonials are not only an important measure of how your business is doing. They're also a powerful promotion tool. Encourage your customers to leave honest reviews on social media or Google My Business. Then, track the positive and negative testimonials. 

Customer Satisfaction (CSat) Score

The first step to getting your customer satisfaction score is to give your customers a customer satisfaction survey. Once you've collected them over a period of time, calculate the average score. 

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Ask customers to answer the question “On a scale of 0 to 10 how likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” 

• Detractors: 0-6
• Passives: 7-8
• Promoters: 9-10

Number of promoters minus number of detractors divided by total respondents. 

Customer Care Metrics

These metrics tell you how well you’re responding to customers on social media. 

Response Time

Your response time is what it sounds like : how long it takes to respond to brand mentions. 

Response Rate

Your response rate is how many mentions you respond to compared to the total number of mentions your brand receives. 

Vanity Metrics 

Vanity metrics are numbers that don’t tell you anything meaningful about the success of your social media efforts on their own, but can be useful for calculating rates. Some examples of vanity metrics include:

• Follower Count
• Number of Impressions
• Number of Clicks
• Likes
• Pageviews
• Subscribers
• Retweets

Best Social Media Analytics Tools

1. Keyhole

Keyhole is a social listening and influencer marketing tool. 

2. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a full service social media management service. 

3. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content marketing platform with great social listening tools.  

4. BrandWatch

BrandWatch is a digital marketing and PR platform with a variety of tools. 

How Sav Can Help

Sav is all about helping small businesses succeed online by buying your perfect domain, building a beautiful website, and promoting that website. Our social media features make it easy to build your social marketing strategy and go viral. Get started today!