What metrics are really important and what should you be tracking
Key takeaways:
- The social media metrics you focus on depend on your business objectives. Some will be more important to you than others.
- Maximize your content by getting to know your audience, so you know how to cater to them.
- Post metrics like conversion and engagement rate will tell you how well your audience is connecting with your content.
Depending on your personality, analyzing your social media efforts is either your favorite or least favorite part of the job. It’s fun to create and post content, but figuring out ROI and the effectiveness of your content is another story.
With all of the in-app and third party analytics tools available these days, you can easily drown in a sea of stats. On the other hand, these tools allow you to look beyond vanity metrics like reactions and shares to more meaningful information. This allows your business to make better decisions and a better strategy for your social media presence.
Which metrics you focus on depends largely on your business objectives. Some will be more important to you than others. Likewise with the frequency you check on your metrics. Some companies have the resources to check every day or every week, and others need to keep it to a monthly regiment.
Here are some analytics you should be paying attention to that can help you fill in the gaps and look a little bit deeper at your impact on social media.
Get to know your audience
To maximize your social media content, you need to know who your audience is or at least who you want them to be. These are some metrics you can track to get to the bottom of it.
- Demographics: We’ll start with the basics. Knowing the foundational makeup of your audience will help you make a lot of decisions about social media content. This includes age, gender, location, race, occupation, etc.
If you’re just digging into these metrics for the first time, you might be surprised to find that you’re attracting an audience you never anticipated. Having this information will help you craft appropriate content and calibrate your tone.
- Growth rate: Whether it’s a primary or secondary objective, growing your audience is always a goal. You want to see those numbers climb! For that number increase to have any meaning, you need to track your progress along the way.
If a certain type of post is gathering more followers, you know to do more of that thing. If you’ve plateaued for a week or month, you know you need to mix it up a little bit.
- Time of day: Learning the time of day your followers are online is another metric that can help you plan your posts. You want to optimize your content to give it the best chance of getting attention.
- Referral: However you track your digital marketing efforts, be sure to pay attention to where your referral traffic is coming from. If you’re making a big commitment to social media, you want to see that become a significant source of referrals leading people back to your website.
If you’re not seeing your social media referral traffic increase, try improving your calls to action, so people have a place to go after seeing your posts.
Post up with analytics
When you’re looking at post metrics specifically, there are a million and one rabbit holes to go down. Here are some of the key analytics that can help you get a better idea of overall performance.
- Conversion rate: Conversion rate tracks the number of people who took the desired action on your post or ad. This could be anything from simply signing up for your newsletter or downloading an ebook.
You need to track this stat to know not only if your posts are engaging enough, but also if the place you’re guiding people to is engaging enough to get them to take the final action. The conversion rate essentially tells you how well you know your audience.
- Engagement rate: Engagement metrics show you how people are interacting with your post (reactions, shares, and comments). The average engagement rate measures the number of engagements versus the size of your audience.
Although these are vanity metrics, they still hold value. Just like with conversion rate, they tell you whether your audience is vibing with your posts or not.
- Bounce rate: Of course, you want people to find their way to your website or their final landing page. But you also want them to stay there. The bounce rate tells you the number of people who made it to your landing page but left without taking action.
If your bounce rate is high, you know there is something that can be improved. Maybe the post isn’t matching up with the landing page. Maybe your landing page doesn’t have the right content to encourage them to take the next step.
- Retention and completion rate: These metrics have to do with video analytics, but since video marketing is such a big commitment, you need to be sure you’re doing it right.
The retention rate tells you the number of people who watched your video and where they stopped. Sorry to be so blunt, but this will give you a hint as to where your videos stop being interesting. You can play around with the content, the call to action placement, and even the length to improve this.
The completion rate is the percentage of the video that people watched. Paired with retention rate, this will give you a complete picture as to who you’re connecting with the most.
How’s your social media content?
In order to knock these metrics out of the park, you need good content. That is easier said than done, especially if you’re limited on time and content creation skills.
ContentBacon can give you that sizzle you’re looking for. Our variety of subscription packages let you choose whatever fits your business. We offer services for blog creation, marketing emails, and social posts among other tasty things. Get in touch with us today to boost your performance and start seeing results!