Navigating social media metrics can be a bit of a challenge when there is so much data to look at. This blog post aims to bring clarity to all those concepts so that you too can navigate your statistics.
Not all metrics are equal, and depending on your objective some are more important than others. Keeping track of your metrics is a vital part of your social media strategy because what you measure, you improve. Therefore, dedicating some time to studying your results will definitely be worth it.
Different social platforms have different metrics, but today we will go over the most common ones.
Likes
Follows
Shares
comments
Impressions
Reach
LIKES AND FOLLOWS
They are considered by many as “vanity metrics” because they are the ones that make a profile look good as well as making us feel good too.
Users tend to gravitate towards popular profiles. The more likes and follows your post generate, the more they will be seen. Nowadays, these metrics are easy to manipulate which means they don’t give any real business results.
SHARES
These are easily one of the best metrics to measure because they indicate quality content. People share because they found your post interesting and informative and wish to share it with others.
COMMENTS
They are good to measure engagement and many social media algorithms value comments over likes mostly because it takes more effort from the user.
IMPRESSIONS AND REACH
This metrics tends to be one that is often shown on social media but it’s the least understood metric -Impressions are the number of times something has been seen while reach is the number of persons who have seen it.
This metric shows the spread a post has and gives you an idea of your potential audience. If your post was seen by the same person twice then your post would have one reach and two impressions.
Choosing the right metrics for your business is a personal decision but it will make a difference in your performance once you have determined what you want to keep track of.
In future posts I will delve into these as well as other metrics in more detail. What statistics do you keep track off? Let us know!