How To Measure Social Media Success

Measuring social media success can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Read on to find out how you can measure yours.

Scroll to read

How To Measure Social Media Success 

With regard to measuring success on social media, it might appear as though every competitor out there is trying to grab the attention of your customer (and they most likely are).
While it might seem like a huge task at first, getting traction on social media platforms that are relevant to your business doesn’t haven’t to be difficult if you know which KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure.
By understanding metrics such as reach, engagement, and influence, you and your marketing team will be well on their way to learning how to measure success on each social media platform that’s relevant to your business.

Calculating KPIs

To implement and monitor effective social media KPIs, we’d recommend starting off by establishing an objective that is in line with an existing business goal.

Once you have evaluated the importance of tracking all of your digital marketing KPIs, you can analyse the existing performance and compare it against the growth you’ve achieved through your social media strategy.

This will ensure you’ll be able to review the existing social media KPIs with a holistic strategy as the business changes and grows.

When discovering how to measure the success of your social media channels, your KPIs will tell you exactly which direction to take your content.

When this occurs, it provides focus and quality data for your team which will ensure their efforts are going to where they need to be to ensure success.

Measuring Audience Value

The growth rate of a social media audience speaks to the volume of the data providing useful insights that go beyond vanity metrics.

Focusing on quality and not quantity plays an important role in measuring success on social media.

This is where brand mentions and brand-related hashtags circulating throughout the platforms come into play aka how people are talking about your brand online.

Social mentions can be achieved by users directly tagging your brand in their content, using your hashtag, blogging about your product, and more.

Measuring Brand Reach

The volume of people engaging with your content and conveying brand loyalty will be inherently different to those who happen across your content based on the constructs of your social media marketing campaign strategy.

It’s worth noting that brand reach alone doesn’t reveal everything but it does signify how many people have been exposed to your content helping to better measure other engagement metrics such as Reach.

This metric is measured by how many people saw your post or paid social campaign. There are three different types:

  • Organic reach - the number of people who saw your content in their newsfeed because they follow your page
  • Viral reach - the number of people who saw your content from others sharing it
  • Paid reach - the number of people who saw your paid ad

Measuring Engagement

When you’re determining how to measure social media marketing, engagement is a major factor.

Back to our quality versus quantity comment before, this goes beyond likes and comments. Sharing is a metric we deem to be a more valuable form of engagement that ensures your company can achieve viral reach.

If a KPI for your social media content is to stand out with your social media posts, consider looking at your marketing strategy. 

Creating and publishing dynamic content that prompts engagement will be a factor within your overall strategy that can lead directly to potential leads & sales.

Measuring Influence

This is a KPI within social media that every business owner should look at when learning how to measure social media success is how much influence your brand has with your audience.

One of the main metrics to consider here is the volume of web traffic acquired through your social media business accounts.

If this is high on your list of KPIs, then think about what sort of content your marketing team can create that will excite your audience enough to stop scrolling in their feed and click through.

How Often Should You Measure Success on Social Media?

When analysing your existing social media and how to make it stand out versus your competitors, you can start to see patterns emerging once you get into a cadence of posting regularly.

But should you track it daily, weekly, monthly, or bimonthly? This will depend on your business goals and how often they are being reviewed.

The Importance of Measuring Social Media KPIs

Knowing how to accurately measure your company's success on social media is important as it allows you to effectively promote increased positive reactions with a brand.

The quality of the content that is being produced goes a long way to reflect a brand’s reputation, but should also support business goals.

By continually trying to foster positive interactions from quality content, your company can measure the benefits of social media interactions through the agreed KPIs.

Social media KPIs can grow your business through goals established within the marketing campaign itself and will clearly indicate to your team if the business’s social media marketing strategy is aligned with those previously set goals.

Focusing on quality and not quantity plays an important role in measuring success on social media.

Summing up...
1
Calculate KPIs
Establish goals & objectives before you launching into social media campaigns
2
Measure & measure often
Once you've achieved your goals, you need to reassess to ensure continued success
3
Know how to accurately measure KPIs
This will ensure you're always measuring what matters most to your business
Let's Talk
We can help you to achieve results.