9 Social Media KPIs You Must Monitor For Successful Businesses

Billions of people use the Internet and it has been estimated that at least three billions are using the Internet to access social media platforms. With such a huge number of users, there is no wonder that it has been appointed as the new, powerful way for marketing campaigns. Any kinds of products and services can easily be found on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other similar applications. With new technology advancement and businesses trying to take over one another on the virtual world, business owners may want to look a bit deeper and analyze further to figure out the best suitable online marketing strategies for their businesses. To do it well, Key Performance Index (KPI) is needed to assess the effectiveness of certain social media platforms and features for the business.

Two of the most essential elements of the KPI are user engagement and reach. User engagement is, in fact, one of the significant factors that decides online marketing success. When people are engaged, they are likely to be potential buyers. When customers are engaged, they are likely to be loyal to the products or services. Considering such facts, the so-called Engagement Metrics must be on the top list of the KPI. Along with it is Reach Metrics. It refers to the number of audience that is within the reach of the brand exposure on social media.

Although different platforms have their own unique features and measurements for the two metrics may need to be varied on behalf of better accuracy, there are some similar patterns that are shared across the apps and can be the base for both metrics.

Below are the aspects to measure Engagement Metrics:

1. Profile visits

The number shows how many people are eager to know the brand (products or services) better. These visits are of higher value than the responses obtained from posts. If the number is high, it will be a good idea to promote new products or services there.

2. Clicks

More clicks usually indicate better posts. If no one is clicking, it means no one has been seduced enough by your posts headline and image. The positive indication may refer to the pitches of the posts only, though, if a large number of clicks are not followed by similar number of likes and shares.

3. Likes

Despite the high probability of people being impulsive when giving likes, posts with a huge number of likes are seen as popular. Also, those likes tend to invite other users to at least take a look at the posts and find out what the fuss is all about.

4. Shares

They are considered more powerful than likes. It is due to the fact that when a post is shared, it means the content is worth a closer look and good enough to be recommended. Some people even think that shares are the way viewers or readers appreciate the good quality of the post content.

5. Comments

There are usually a wide range of comments. Some suggest fascination, some others may imply anger, while the rest may question, criticize, agree, decline or simply find that the content is entertaining. No matter what kinds of comments dominate the responses, those comments confirm that the post contains interesting or rather intriguing stuff that triggers people to react. Checking on your comments is a good way to find out how engaged your followers are.

6. Mentions and tags

These are the features held accountable to measure brand awareness. The more people mention or tag a brand, the higher level of awareness people have towards the brand.

And here are the aspects for Reach Metrics:

1. Followers

Followers refer to users who would be happy to find out the latest updates of company products or services. Any new posts will be shown on their social media homepage and there is a great chance that they will notice and take a closer look on each of the new posts. The number of followers could be a good estimation of the company definite reach.

2. Impressions

Apart from followers, new posts can be displayed on other users’ homepages without their following the company account. This could happen when someone is linked to a friend who follows, comments, likes one of the company updates or posts.

3. Traffic

Each social media platform provides in-house analytics: Facebook with its Audience Insights, Twitter with its Twitter Analytics, etc. Those can be used to measure the KPIs at no cost. In addition, there are some online analytics tools that can track traffic from multiple social media accounts on different platforms. Besides those tools, there is Google Analytics that help identify which platforms lead the most customers to visit the company’s official website, what kinds of posts result in high web traffic, the amount of time spent on the site and the web pages they view. Analytics will also help you find out which blog posts and topics drive most traffic, so you can produce more such content.

In conclusion, conducting some data analysis above can bring positive effects to business growth.