Social media is an overwhelming digital entity for startups and businesses. It provides limitless engagement opportunities and exposure to brands which helps them identify their target audience.

The reason for its popularity in the business circle is because it is marketing friendly and highly effective when it comes to expanding the brand’s sphere of influence. 

It is evident that marketing on social media concludes various outcomes. The resulting outcome may be beneficial to the brand or completely against its objectives. Such factors are taken into consideration when planning out future endeavours. So how do brands really gauge the effectiveness of their marketing activities? 

In this article, we are going to discuss key performance indicators(KPIs) that are a widely used assistance tool that keeps track of social media analytics. It indicates the response given by the audience to your posts based on viewership, likes, comments, and brand mentions.

Fundamental focus areas of modern KPIs:

1. Engagement

The idea behind social media marketing is to maximize engagement with subscribers. This focus area acts as a catalyst for the development of other KPIs that’s why it is the #1 focus area of social media marketers. 

Having an enormous reach with low engagement is a worrying sign since it shows that there is an absence of content that resonates and compels the audience. There is no gain in reaching millions of followers, if you are unable to generate interest in your followers through the content that you post.

Link clicks: Clicks on post links are great indicators of the amount of attention a post has received. It is the first step towards engagement and the chances of further engagement increases if the viewer finds it appealing. But if there is a large number of clicks on the post and very few likes and shares, it means that the post was successful in grabbing the attention of the viewers but failed to meet the expectations.

Likes and shares: Talking about likes and shares, the two KPIs lead to more attention as engaging posts naturally gravitate around the audience. 

Comment: Commenting is a social gesture that helps in gaining valuable feedback. This feedbacks can be used as indicators that discover the fault lines and identify the area in which there is any room for improvement. Comments are considered as the most important KPI since they represent the pure and honest opinions of the audience regarding your content.

2. Reach

The number of people that subscribe or follow your social network displays your reach and popularity. Impressions show how often your post appeared in somebody’s timeline or newsfeed, either in light of the fact that they are now following you or on the grounds that somebody they know has preferred or shared your content. 

This doesn’t imply that for each impression somebody really checked out your post — it implies that they had a chance to. however, the higher the number of impressions, the higher the chances of engagement.

One important question that arises is: What percentage of traffic visits your website? How much of it is coming from social media?

This is a big one. In case you’re putting in a decent amount of time and effort in your social media content, you’ll need to ensure that this number mirrors your effort. 

You can undoubtedly distinguish this number if you use HubSpot. You can simply visit the sources of reports. Check whether a good chunk of traffic is visiting from social media. If not, you are going to have to expand the reach of your online presence.

3. Leads

When your social media networks begin picking up a foothold, it is very easy to get caught up in the game of likes and shares. It feels great to see your audience satisfied and happy with your content, but there are other factors worth concerning. 

To make sure you are receiving the utmost ROI from your social media, you need to ask yourself a question: How many of my followers are actually willing to buy my products or services?

For example, if you create educational content such as online courses for your business, there is a ton of information you can post on social media to further educate them about the topic of the course itself.  But, if you don’t convert these followers to leads and eventually customers, the ROI of the work required for this traffic channel will be hard to justify.

You may have a huge following on Instagram, because your followers love your content, yet how can this affection be transformed into sales? This question can’t be answered if you are not keeping track of lead generation on social media.  

It is as simple as this: If you are unable to create a drive to purchase in your audience, your marketing strategy is either not effective enough or your content fails to derive an urge to make a purchase.

The earlier you identify the issue, the better — however, you need to start figuring out the demographics of your followers and target their interests accordingly. 

4. Customers

It is essential to keep count of the number of loyal customers because, in the end, it comes down to that portion of people that actually gives you the benefit. 

The focus of your social media posts should be centered around producing content that serves the need of your audience.It is also important to have a discussion with them about it. But when you ask them for something in return, you need to know how many are willing to maintain a long term relationship.  

You shouldn’t anticipate having new client rates from social media in light of the fact that a ton of your followers will be current clients and another chunk of them are just interested in the content. 

However, you need to focus on the highest and lowest number of engagements on different social media channels. This shows you where to concentrate additional time to increase engagement and identify your best leads.

Bottomline

This is a definitive estimation of your success in engaging with new clients and keeping them intact through social media marketing. Once you find the right people, consider them as a valuable asset to your company. Engagement and reach are rather amusing to gauge since they make your image look great, however, you need to follow the KPIs that display the outlook of the whole image. The objective of estimating social media KPIs do not focus on justifying your marketing strategy, but it’s sole purpose is to inform you about the areas where there needs improvement.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

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