9 Social Media Engagement Metrics Every Business Should Know
If you want your business to get the most out of social media, it’s important that you know how to use this medium to engage with people. And while there are some social media engagement best practices you can use to get started, it’s important to continuously measure your efforts and adjust accordingly. Since you want to be sure that you’re using the right metrics to make strategy adjustments, here are the nine metrics you need to know about:
Referral Traffic If you look at your website’s analytics data, you will be able to see where the visitors are coming from. One of your goals should be to continuously increase the number of visitors who come to your site from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and any other social networks you’re using.
Audience Growth Rate This metric is specific to Facebook. Because it expresses new followers as a percent-change over time, it’s very useful for seeing which points in your social media for businesses usage have led to the most growth.
CTR One way to improve social engagement is by experimenting with different update titles and formats. Then by comparing how many people click the
different variations, you’ll be able to learn more about what people respond to best.
Conversion Although this metric can be a little tricky, the right tool can make it possible for you to get some insight into how many leads or new customers you’re gaining directly from social media.
Customer Service Utilization This is a very interesting metric. By using the following formula, Avg. Time x Costs Per Hour x Customer Service Inquiries Completed = Savings, you’ll be able to gauge just how effective social media is as a customer support tool.
Potential Reach This metric refers to the combined followers of the people following you. While it can be useful in certain situations, it can also be misleading. The reason is it can set unrealistic expectations. So if you’re ever looking at this metric or using it in a presentation, be sure to provide the proper context.
Influence This metric is closely related to potential reach. And as with potential reach, even though there may be a situation where it makes sense to refer to this metric, you’re ultimately going to get much more actionable information by focusing on the other social media engagement metrics on this list.
Bounce Rate While it’s fairly common for a significant percentage of social media users to view one page of a website and then leave, focusing on this metric can help you come up with new ways to get social media visitors to view more than just one page of your site.
Average Engagement Rate This metric can be useful for keeping a finger on the pulse of your social media activity. While occasional drops are inevitable, if you notice a continuous drop in social media engagement, it’s probably a sign that you need to rethink what you’re sharing and posting.