3 Key Social Media Metrics to Track

At one point, social media was considered to be just a phase that some progressive marketers were going through. However, with the attention and returns that social media have garnered recently, it’s safe to say that social media is here to stay. Most brands and businesses have realized the importance of social media and the impact it can have on their business. So they’re making an effort to join the major platforms and get involved. But then what? Because social media is a new addition to many marketing departments, it can be tricky to know what to capture. In this post I’ve listed a few significant metrics that any company with a social media account should aim to gather monthly, if not weekly.

Fans and Following

Growing your following is an important part of being social. Regularly tracking the number of likes on a page or the number of account followers can help identify overall growth or decline. This same information can also answer questions about how that growth happened by determining whether new followers resulted from a press release, product launch, or social campaign. Or perhaps it was just a normal spurt of growth that comes about when your brand gains popularity. Without tracking this information over time, it would be difficult to pinpoint these key identifiers. However, as important as likes and followers are to the health of your account, social media wouldn’t be social without some engagement and interaction with your following.

Engagement Rate

Understanding your engagement rate is a must for managing a social media presence. It illustrates the performance of your account and social media efforts. Who is interacting, how often are they interacting, what types of content are getting the best reactions, and how often are people sharing my content? All of these metrics, along with the ratio of followers that you have, will determine your engagement rate. Focusing on engagement rate and strengthening your online community encourages people to interact with your brand and become active brand stewards. And by monitoring your engagement rate over time, you’ll be able to determine what content your community is more likely to engage with and how to nurture those relationships in the future.

User-Generated Content

As a community manager, there is nothing better than user-generated content. It can help fill gaps, add to the community, and offer good insights about your followers. Many times this content falls under engagement rate. But paying special attention to the types of user-generated content that’s being shared, how often user-generated content is published, and how the community reacts to it are all metrics of special consideration.

Whether you’re just dabbling in social media for the first time or taking it on as a massive part of your new marketing strategy, understanding your data and recognizing key indicators is important. And a social media analytics tool like Viralheat can surface this information and lay it out in a digestible, easy-to-understand format.

Social media is more than just pictures and funny sayings to share with your friends—it’s an important business tool that provides an avenue for connecting with your users and collecting data on your marketspace.