Social media has become the go-to place for companies who want to make a connection with their customers. It’s where we engage with them, entertain them, hold contests, and basically make them fall in love with our brand.
More importantly, it’s where we convert followers into customers.
However, with so much noise going on, it can be hard to keep track of everything — including knowing what to keep track of in the first place. This is why it’s important that all businesses understand the essential social metrics that answer these very simple but powerful questions:
- How is our business doing?
- Are we reaching the right people?
- How many of our followers have the potential to become our customers?
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator, a measurable value which shows you how close your business is to your objectives. For, example high engagement on Facebook tells you that you’re putting out the right content that your followers want to see, while poor engagement tells you there is work still to be done.
The reason we measure our KPIs is so that we know exactly how healthy or unhealthy our online marketing efforts are. We can monitor and analyze our KPIs and make real-time adjustments so that we get as close to our targets as possible and grow our business.
There are KPIs that some businesses need to focus on while others can ignore — it all depends on your niche. However, there are a number of social media KPIs that all businesses should be tracking. Let’s take a look at what they are.
1. Clicks
If no one is clicking, it means no one has been seduced enough by your posts headline and image.
In other words, you’ve failed the first test — which is to arouse their curiosity.
To get more clicks, your posts need to have catchy headlines combined with an eye-catching image. Not any old headline works.
The highest converting headlines on social media either ask a question and tease a solution, provide insider info, promise to bust a myth, use numbers (such as ‘Top 5 Ways To Lose Weight), strike fear in the heart of people, or cast a prediction about a future trend.
If you can get your click count up, it’s onwards and upwards.
A selection of eye-catching headline from Buzzfeed’s twitter that make people want to click
2. Shares
When we share a post, it suggests we thought the content was awesome, right?
Not quite. In fact, 59% of us share social media content without reading it first. This means we’re so enamored by the headline that we’re prepared to share anything on our own feed — including an article titled Marijuana Contains “Alien DNA” From Outside Of Our Solar System, NASA Confirms that isn’t about aliens at all. Instead, it was an experiment to prove how giddy we get when we see an outrageous headline.
A high share count tells you that your headline game is on-point. A low share count could tell you the opposite, and that there is still some work to do.
3. Comments
Comments are an essential social media KPI that lets you know how many of your followers are engaged followers.
It’s one thing to have 50,000 followers, but most of them are no good for you if only 500 are actively engaging with your brand.
Checking on your comments is a good way to find out how engaged your followers are.
That’s not the only thing a busy comments section can tell you; the more comments your posts have, the more relevant your content is.
If your content is always met with silence but your impressions and click counts are high, it means you’re not offering value to your followers. In other words, you’re not giving them enough of what they want in terms of content.
There are a few ways to find out what content your followers want to see. Check to see what content your competitors are producing, find out what’s trending on social media in your niche, and track your social media analytics to see what types of content have been the most popular in the past.
A fourth option would be to ask your followers what they’d like to see from you. What problems would they like you to solve and what questions to answer?
4. Traffic Data
Social media is a key part of SEO. It’s not one of the most overlooked SEO metrics — but it’s close, and it drives a lot of referral traffic. Back in 2015, it drove as much as 31%. There was a time when social media was nothing more than an engagement medium, but it’s now a vital source of web traffic. The opportunities are there — but are you making the most of them?
Traffic data is a valuable KPI that lets you know exactly how much of your traffic is coming to your site from social media. If it’s way less than 31%, you’ll need to rethink your content marketing strategy.
Nightwatch dashboard helps you analyze your SEO performance, search visibility, and traffic
If you already use an SEO performance tool, you should be able to check your traffic sources. If your tool doesn’t come with such a feature, there are others that do. Nightwatch is a solid all-in-one option that easily integrates all your data and lets you not only know how much traffic you’re getting from social media — as well as elsewhere — but also track your and your competitors’ rankings and backlinks and analyze your SEO metrics and performance.
5. Leads
Let’s face it, your bottom line matters a lot. If you’re putting a frankly exhaustive amount of time and effort into social media but your bottom line sucks, it’s all for nothing.
Leads are what it all comes down to. If you have 50,000 followers and many of them are engaging, it means nothing if none of them are buying. To find out if they’re converting into customers, you can use Google Analytics.
Google Analytics lets you find out who got the last touch before a purchase — in other words, was it Facebook that helped you seal the deal, or was it Google that brought them to the point of purchase?
To find out who got the last touch, you need to set up your goals. You can find out how to do that in this comprehensive tutorial from Google, but first, you need to open Google Analytics, click “Conversions,” and head over to “Multi-Channel Funnels.”
Before you can find out where your customers are coming from, you need to set up your goals Source: Google Analytics
Once you’ve set your goals up, you can check the Assisted Conversions report to analyze your efforts. This lets you know the indirect and direct impact that your social media channels had on your conversion goals.
An impact is direct when it was the last point of interaction before a goal was made, and it’s indirect when it was just another interaction in the journey a prospect makes en route to becoming a customer.
A typical conversion path that includes social media as an indirect impact will look like this:
Twitter > SEO > Conversion
Tracking your conversion paths lets you know which social media channels are more impactful and viable than others. You can then use the results to improve your social media marketing efforts.
These are the top 5 social media KPIs that all businesses should be tracking — whether you’ve got a mobile app, an eCommerce shop, or a bricks and mortar store.
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