Social media metrics are incredibly important as you develop and improve your social media marketing strategy. Your social marketing efforts can include everything from publishing blog posts to knowledge sites like Quora, and even online groups. We want to talk about measuring your impact when it comes to social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Historically, measuring your PR and social marketing efforts weren’t easy. This was until Google started measuring impressions and click-throughs. Since then, these measurements have also trickled down to social networks. But when it comes to social networks there are more than just these two metrics that you can track. We’ve compiled a list of metrics that you can measure. We also noted how helpful these metrics are and how easy they are to capture with traditional social media management tools.

1. Impressions
Moderately Helpful | Easy to capture

A social media metric that is easy to capture are impressions. This describes the total number of views that your single piece of content receives. Impressions only tell you that someone saw your post in their feed. It doesn’t guarantee that they looked at it. Here’s an example of how LinkedIn shows impressions as ‘views’. These are listed below your specific post.

2. Click-throughs
Very Helpful | Easy to capture

Another social media metric that is relatively easy to capture are click-throughs. This metric indicates the number of people in your audience who have clicked on your content. Once you know the number of click-throughs and total impressions, then it’s easy to calculate your click-through rate (CTR). To calculate your CTR, divide the total number of impressions by your total number of click-throughs. Clickthroughs are very helpful. It means the user clicked on your content. Ultimately, they left his or her social media feed to view their content. That’s one of the highest levels of engagement you can expect.

3. Followers
Not very helpful | Easy to capture

A social media metric that is easy to capture but is not very helpful is your total number of followers. This metric tells you how many people are following your profile or company’s page. By itself, this is not very helpful. Companies reach less than 1% of their followers with their content. So, it’s not guaranteed that someone will see your post just because they follow you. For example, Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes content that encourages meaningful connection and conversation. Additionally, Facebook will show “less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.” To learn more about how to overcome changing social media algorithms, check out our blog post on Organic Reach Algorithms Are Changing (Here’s What You Can Do About It).

4. 1st and 2nd Degree Connections
Very helpful | Difficult to capture

A social media metric this very helpful, but difficult to capture are your 1st and 2nd-degree connections. This refers to the people to who you are directly connected on social networks. These people are your profile or brand’s followers. 2nd-degree connections are people who are connected to your 1st-degree connections. By including 2nd-degree connections in your network you will reach a high percentage of your connections with content. If the content is liked, shared, or clicked on by your network then your posts will show up more frequently to your network. There is no way to know in advance how many people you can reach through posts.

By engaging 1st and 2nd-degree connections, WITI Boston’s Network, a professional community, was able to increase event attendance by over 400%.

Do you know how many people your brand should be reaching? Check out our Custom Social Reach Calculator. Learn about the important factors that help you to maximize your social reach in our Social Reach Calculator blog post.

5. Preferred Content-Type
Very helpful | Difficult to capture

A social media metric that is difficult to capture, but very helpful is knowing your audience’s preferred content type. It’s super hard to gather this information over a period of time. Also, you must study trends across posts and across social networks. On top of that, it’s difficult to tell what type of content your audience likes. Do they like blog posts, images, videos, articles, or diversity of content? If you knew what they preferred, then you could produce more of what they like. With data from MarketBeam, you’ll have an aggregated view where you can learn how to cater to your audiences’ preferences.

6. Location
Very helpful | Difficult to capture

Another social media metric that is difficult to capture, but is very helpful is knowing where you audience is located. This provides an indication of where your social traffic is coming from. You can also tell where potential prospects or consumers may be located geographically. If you want to reach a certain geographic area, the best bet is to find influencers or partners in that region who can post your content.

7. Preferred Social Network
Very helpful | Difficult to capture

And lastly, a social media metric that is very helpful, but difficult to capture is knowing your consumers’ preferred social network. Consumers these days have multiple social media accounts. The median American uses 3 to 8 social media platforms. It’s no surprise that Facebook and YouTube are the most popular! It’s helpful to know which social media networks your audience prefers. With this knowledge, you can cater your content to your audience’s preferences. Thereby increasing the chances of your content being seen.

With a tool like MarketBeam, you can track the evolution of your audiences’ preferred content type and social network. You can also look at your campaign efforts over the last month or quarter and view where your audience is located geographically. Most importantly, you can use the tool to amplify your content. You can amplify content by using your executives’ and employees’ social networks to reach beyond your brand’s followers.

Want to learn more about social marketing metrics?

To learn more, register for WITI’s webinar on November 28th at 12 – 1 PM Pacific, where Pushpa Ithal, CEO and founder of MarketBeam will share her insights on how to measure your campaign impact. If you’re not a WITI member, register using promo code webvip1128 to attend free of charge.