Why Analytics Need to Go Beyond Likes and Shares

We are living in an era when every social media creator is focusing on increasing their number of likes and comments. The higher the engagement they receive, the higher the level of success they assume to have. 

However, running an effective social media campaign involves more than these surface-level metrics. In this article, we will delve beyond likes and shares to focus on the most crucial metrics that brands should consider.

The Evolution of Social Media Metrics

There was a time when likes were the most critical metric that brands considered when evaluating their social media marketing strategy. With the development of more advanced social media tracking tools and the need for more effective tracking, brands are realizing that success is multifaceted.

While likes and shares are good tracking points, many other metrics can show the level of success of your campaign. The exact metrics you track will depend on your social media goal. 

The Pitfalls of Focusing on Likes, Comments, and Shares

When you focus on metrics like likes, shares, and comments, these can be misleading for several reasons, such as:

• Not an accurate representation of the engagement rates. When a person likes or shares your post, they will only need to click once. You cannot have a precise picture if the people are genuinely interested in your content. It cannot provide you with an accurate picture of whether someone reads an entire post or if they left a comment registering their displeasure. 
• A false sense of success. At times, the social media algorithm will promote your post, making it reach a larger audience. With time, you might have a false sense that your content is doing fine. But when you create your next post, you realize that the reach is highly inhibited.

According to a Sprout Social survey, only 38% of marketers believe that likes and shares are an accurate indicator of a campaign's performance. However, you also need a strategy for marketing to the silent lurkers.

Key Metrics That Brands Should Track

We have already noted why brands should avoid over focusing on likes and shares, but which metrics should they track then? To get a clear picture of how social media impacts your brand, you can categorize your social media metrics into two categories: engagement and conversion.

Engagement metrics focus on how your audience interacts with your content. It considers different metrics such as:

• Comments. If your followers are sharing their opinions and thoughts concerning your brand, this can provide key brand sentiments.
• Shares. This involves users adding commentary on content, which can show their level of interest and their desire to share your posts.
• Mention. These can be either positive or negative and illustrates how your brand initiates conversations and increases awareness. 
• Likes and reactions. Shows whether your audience is interested in your content.
• Click and interactions with links. This indicates that users are clicking on your links to explore more about the post.
• Mentions/tags. These metrics help increase visibility and enhance community engagement.
• Direct messages. It can cause more personalized interactions and a deeper connection.
• Impressions. This metric shows you the number of times your content has appeared in the viewer's feed. Since your followers may interact with your post more than once, it is possible to have more than one impression of your total number of followers. To grow your impression, you need to understand the content visibility guidelines and the impact of shadowbanning.
• Reach. While this is similar to impressions, it only considers a unique review rather than the total number of views.
• Audience growth rate. Rather than just focusing on the number of followers, a month-by-month audience growth rate can provide insights into whether your audience finds your content appealing. You can calculate this by dividing the total number of new followers by your total audience and multiplying by 100. 
• Click-through rate. The CTR shows the percentage of viewers who click on a post. To get this number, you can divide the total number of clicks by the impressions. If you have a strong CTA, it's an indication that your audience wants to find out more about your social media content. 
• Social conversion. After a person buys from your site, this is considered a social media conversion. Therefore, this number will show you the exact number of followers who buy your products. 

These metrics can help you gauge the effectiveness of your social media content and whether it's resonating with your target audience. You need to measure and track the engagement metric so that you can focus on increasing your engagement. You can focus on optimizing your content to further improve it. 

This data will also help you benchmark against industry rivals and identify any existing gaps. When you track metrics such as brand mentions, you can use the data to understand what customers are saying about your brand and save your brand reputation.

Key Social Media Metrics to Track Your Growth Rate

While metrics such as the number of likes, comments, and shares are vanity metrics, other metrics will indicate whether your account is growing or not. The metric you will track will depend on precisely what you want to find out.

Audience Growth Rate

While follower count is often considered a vanity metric, follower growth is a more accurate indicator of the channel's health. It can show if you are doing better than your competition. Some of the metrics to track under the audience growth metric include:

Follower Growth Rat

This metric considers your net followers over a specific period. It can provide important insights into whether your content strategy is working or not. To get this figure, you need to deduct the number of followers you had at the beginning of the period from the followers you had at the end of that period. While you may not gain much insight from the follower count, it can provide a clear picture over the given period.

To calculate the follower growth rate, you should multiply the followers you have gained over a particular period by the number of followers you previously had and multiply the result by 100. 

Customer Satisfaction Metrics

By monitoring social media conversations, you can easily determine which areas of your content are working and which aren't. You can track whether customers are satisfied in areas such as content, brand, product, and more. These metrics can further be categorized into:

Reply Time

If you want your followers to turn into a community, you need to be responsive. According to various studies, one area that businesses should prioritize is offering personalized customer service. This is why the reply time is one of the most critical customer service metrics, as it indicates the average time it takes to respond to customers. You can use social listening tools such as Sprout Social to track how long your team takes to respond to customers’ queries.

Comment

This metric shows what people are saying about your brand. It is an excellent place for finding opportunities that help improve customer service. While this is also a vanity metric, it is still worth tracking.

Final Thoughts

With the evolution of social media marketing, brands must recognize the risks associated with prioritizing likes and shares. By focusing on meaningful metrics that track ROI and enhancing the customer experience, businesses can elevate their brands to the next level.