This year, social media advertising is set to eclipse the revenue of television advertising, reaching $177 billion worldwide. As a large or small business owner, it can be hard to see how well your budget is being spent. So how do you check its effectiveness? One way is with key performance indicators. Read on as we tell you the social media KPIs you should be monitoring.
Reach
Reach is an indicator of how many people see your social media posts. You can view it as three main areas.
Total reach indicates unique users who have seen your post or content. It should not get confused with potential reach, which is an estimation of the audience that may see your post.
Impressions measure how many times your ad, post, or social media content gets displayed. This is regardless of if the ad gets clicked upon or not. It differs from reach, as one person can see an ad many different times.
Share of voice is a lesser-used KPI, though still useful. It shows how many times your brand has been mentioned, measured against competitor mentions.
Engagement
Engagement is arguably the most important metric. It measures how well your posts and content are received and responded to. This can tell you if your marketing efforts are actually working.
Clicks happen when people click on content to view it. This tells you how many people are watching, and it should be judged in conjunction with likes.
Likes do what they say on the tin and are a measure of who enjoyed your post. If you have lots of clicks but very few likes, then people are viewing the content but not enjoying it.
Shares are arguably more important than likes, which can be a passive action. This shows that someone thought your content had enough value that others would like it as well.
Community Growth
When you design a social media campaign with community growth in mind, you are setting yourself up for the long term. This concerns how well your new and total subscribers are growing.
They are important as followers and subscribers are a permanent pool of engaged traffic that have a relationship with your brand.
Website Visits
The goal of any social media campaign should be to increase conversions. Doing so inevitably leads to the website. If you have a huge social media following but no website traffic, then you need to find a way to get them there.
New users measure people visiting who have never been to the site before, while sessions will measure how many times web users visited. You can also check how many pages they visited, and the average time spent on the website.
Which Social Media KPIs to Watch
You don’t have to measure all of these social media KPIs and when one increases, it should impact others. Choose a goal at the start of the campaign and decide on which you will track. Remember that whatever you follow, it should always end up in an increase in conversions.
This article is one of many to help your business grow. From marketing to finance, we can help your business thrive in the digital economy.
