A strong social media presence is important for every business. Today, when customers like to stay connected with their favourite brands or companies, your performance on social media plays a great role in determining how much people connect with your brand.
Most young people (18 – 34 years old) follow their favourite brands on social networking sites. Therefore, businesses looking for an effective way to reach their audience, strengthen their bond with customers, and increase revenue can utilize social media to their advantage.
However, it’s important to leverage the best social media marketing tactics and accurately measure their success to create an impact on your target audience and market. For that, one needs to look beyond the followers and the number of “likes” they receive. Below we discuss some of the best social media marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor how well your brand is doing on social media networks.
How To Choose Your KPIs
KPIs are the performance metrics that help your business analyze its campaigns and marketing efforts. These indicators also guide you to improve your strategy and maximize profits by guiding better digital marketing decisions. In each social media channel, there are countless metrics available to review your performance.
KPIs for Target Audience Reach
To do well in business and achieve profit margins, it is important to reach out to the right audiences on the right platforms. Reach is a metric that helps you figure out if your brand message has travelled to the people you are targeting. Here are some of the KPIs that can measure your social media reach:
Followers
Look at how many followers and fans you have on each of your social media platforms. Only the customers that you have reached can be transformed into leads.
Impressions
Impressions indicate the number of people who have seen your brand’s messages on each platform. It is a very good metric to determine how many times your posts showed up on different timelines and newsfeeds. An increasing number of impressions indicates your brand’s visibility among audiences is growing.
KPIs for Target Audience Engagement
These metrics help you determine how well your brand is engaging with your target audience on social media platforms.
Clicks
It is one of the easiest ways to measure engagement. The more your links on social media platforms get clicked, the more likely that your brand will cultivate qualified leads. Increasing web traffic from social media platforms, for example, is a reflection that your social media presence is strong and your followers are interested to learn more about you.
Likes
“Likes” play a crucial role in measuring the performance of your campaigns. When your posts on social media platforms gather more likes, your brand has a higher rate of engagement. Likes also indicate that your content is strong and has authority.
Shares
Though “likes” are a great indicator of brand engagement, they do not necessarily convey a strong attachment towards your posts. In many cases, users hit the like button without reading the whole post. Shares and retweets are stronger metrics than “likes” since they show significantly more commitment to a brand and its content.
Comments
Digital marketers find comments to be stronger than likes. Comments indicate that your audience is interacting with your brand. Comments are an effective source to measure the performance of your campaign.
KPIs for Target Audience Conversions
Once you have successfully engaged with your target audience, it’s time to think about the factors affecting your bottom line. KPIs are also used to measure conversions and can help you figure out the ultimate impact of your social media campaign. After all, “likes,” “shares,” and “comments” hold no limited value if your followers do not visit your website or purchase your product or service.
Sales Revenue
Increasing sales revenue is one of the marketing goals that every company contends for. Measuring sales that are generated directly from social media campaigns is a great way to determine how much direct impact social media is having on your bottom line.
Lead Conversion Rate
We know that social media platforms are great for earning trust and promoting conversions. Lead conversion rates are an effective metric that indicates the number of prospects from your social media campaign buying your products or services. You can also refer to Google Analytics to learn more about how visitors from social media engage with your site once they’ve landed on your landing pages.
Non-Revenue Conversions
Not all conversions earn you money. Sometimes, conversions can improve your client base or grow your email marketing list. Studying non-revenue conversions like the number of eBook downloads or form sign-ups can help you evaluate your overall marketing strategy and improve it if required.
Social Media KPI Tracking Is Essential
So, to outlast the competition and promote your business successfully, simply creating a social media profile is not enough. To get the most out of your investment, you need to embrace the most productive and efficient ways to communicate with your audience. Social media KPIs can help you determine what is the most efficient way to do that and can help you continuously refine and adjust your strategy as it continues to grow over time.