The top 5 social metrics businesses must track

Social media metrics are vital to your marketing strategy. But of the countless metrics you could track, which should you track? These are the top 5 that have helped my own clients find success time and again.

Your social metrics enable you to take a deep dive into your channels’ performance, gain insights into what your audience really thinks about your brand and business, and understand how to improve those perceptions.

However, with the seemingless endless number of metrics available, it can be hard knowing where to start. That’s why today I’ve laid out the 5 most powerful metrics to track for your social media marketing, as evidenced by the stellar results and immense successes enjoyed by my own clients.

1) Likes and Comments

Having a big following is a great start, absolutely—but ultimately it doesn’t mean much if your audience isn’t interacting with your content. Measuring how often users like and comment on your posts is crucial, not least because it comprises both qualitative data (likes) and quantitative data (comments), both of which you can leverage in different ways to improve your content and shape it around what your audience wants to see.

2) Impressions

Social media impressions measure how many users were exposed to your content. This matters because it gives you an insight into just how far your ad spend can actually go, and therefore can inform future paid ad spending to help you maximise your budget.

That being said, even if paid ads aren’t part of your current marketing strategy, you might still want to look at impressions—they can also teach you about what kind of content is resonating most with your audience. On that note, remember that each platform measures impressions differently. An impression on Twitter is when a user sees a tweet, whereas on Facebook it’s when they see a paid ad onscreen. On Instagram it’s when a user views a piece of content, and on TikTok there’s actually no metric called impressions, although of course for the purpose of your own data you could count a video view as an impression.

3) Lead generation

Lead generation is when you attract prospects to your business and nurture them to boost their interest in your brand, with a view to converting them into customers. Marketers use social media to generate leads by creating compelling and irresistible content that attracts and delights audiences in equal measure. Measuring lead generation actually entails tracking other metrics, like web traffic, lead quality, and conversion rates from your social channels. For example, a significant amount of web traffic coming from Facebook highlights that your Facebook presence in particular is a good source of lead generation.

4) Sales or revenue

Most social media platforms that offer monetisation schemes are transparent in how much you can earn from them as a marketer. That makes it easy to track precisely how well your activity is translating into sales or revenue.

5) Web traffic

If you’re reading this, your business probably relies at least somewhat on web traffic—so measuring it is imperative. For example, you might track pageviews across your Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest profiles to measure how much of your web traffic is coming from organic social media.

Top 3 tools for tracking social metrics

1) HubSpot

Price: Free trial, then $800–$3,600 for the Marketing Hub

HubSpot monitors both your web traffic and brand mentions across social media. Its accessible dashboard follows the customer lifecycle, automatically tracks engagements, and makes it easier than ever to schedule posts.

2) NetBase Quid

Price: $300–$1,000 a month

NetBase Quid enables you to quickly identify emerging trends to make better-informed decisions and increase ROI. It provides realtime analytics on conversations involving your brand worldwide, and helps you scope out the main drivers of these conversations all across social media.

3) Google Analytics

Price: Free

Google Analytics collates data from across your app and website to better understand your customer journey. It includes privacy controls like cookieless measurement, as well as advanced conversion and behavioural modelling.

A brief learning period—and a lifetime of brand growth thereafter

Your social metrics are key to knowing how your brand’s social media profiles are performing with regard to your predetermined marketing goals. They’re essential for growing your business and continually enhancing its public image. Invest some time in understanding how they work and which would be most valuable to track, and soon you’ll be enjoying greater brand visibility and happier customers than ever.