Understanding Social Media Metrics

Do you feel utterly lost while looking at your social media analytics? Don’t worry, we’ve all been there from time to time. In this post, We’ll break down the most important metrics to look for while scoping out your social channels by the numbers. 

There are many metrics to note while understanding analytics in social media. There’s growth, reach, engagement, content, sentiment, and impressions. I’ve grouped these into three categories, to create more distinction, as they often overlap with one another: engagement, awareness, and sentiment.

Weiguo Fan and Michael D. Gordon summarize these three vital social media metrics in a 2014 article that still holds up to this day, “The Power of Social Media Analytics,” published in Communications of the ACM,

“Brand awareness introduces customers to a brand (or product) or increases their familiarity. Brand engagement increases users’ connection with a brand. Word of mouth encourages users’ attempts to positively influence other users’ behavior.”

The most important of these is engagement. This consists of things likes, comments, and shares, which shows how your audience is interacting with your content and what content interests them most. 

You’ll find your brand awareness through impressions, reach, and growth. These three components will give you a picture of how many people who follow and don’t follow you are seeing your content and in turn, tap the follow button to become engaged followers. Impressions are the number of times your content is shown. Reach is the number of people your content is shown to. Growth is how many people follow you.

Sentiment is unique because it provides qualitative data. It consists of what people are saying about your brand and what unique products or information you have to offer. Look to conversations about your brand for this metric. Jacquline Zote from Sprout Social uses the term share of voice to broaden this term and acknowledge competitors, 

“Share of voice is a measure of the market your brand owns compared to other brands in the same industry. It gauges brand awareness and customer engagement to show you how you stack up to the competition.”

This employs techniques like social listening, which analyzes conversations like comments and mentions about your brand or industry. With this information, you can track keywords, trends and feedback about your brand and its competitors. 

Let’s dive into the different ways these metrics work through some day-to-day social media questions you might think about at while demystifying your social media analytics.

Who is my audience? 

Narrowing down your audience is an important step in any social media analysis. It helps us to understand if our brands are reaching people who connect with their mission and how to present and improve content to gain more likeminded followers, or branch out and expand. For this question, track your awareness. Reach and growthare good indicators of this metric. While analyzing your reach, you’ll be able to gain a better understanding of your demographics: where your where your audience is coming from, their age groups, and their gender identities. Your growth will indicate how many people are following you and how quickly that number grows.

Am I doing better than my competitors? 

This is an area where sentiment will come into play as well as engagement. By observing how people respond to your content or products against your competitors’ through techniques like social listening and share of voice, you can understand what brands takes the lead in your industry or which ones are similar to yours in size and how they compare in terms of engagement. Facebook even has a competitor analysis tool businesses can utilize to identify rivals and analyze their strategies and their audience sentiment.

What are people saying about my brand? 

The engagement your brand garners mentioned in the previous section will lead you to finding this answer. By looking at the feedback people provide your business through comments, mentions, and reviews, you can learn quite a bit about the sentiment surrounding your brand and address any concerns or questions.

When is the best time to publish?

Thinking back to the idea of “Who is my audience?” will help you to understand this often puzzling question. The demographics found while analyzing your reach can offer insight into what time is best for publishing. For example, if your audience consists of mostly 25-35 year-olds from New York City, you might infer that they commute to and from a nine-to-five job by subway. The times they will likely be checking their socials are before and after work and maybe in the evenings to wind down before bed. 8 am, 4 pm and 6 pm, so might be some good times to schedule your posts. Social media analytics platforms like Buffer often have tools that will analyze your content’s performance and tell you the best days and times for posting as well.

Which content does my audience enjoy the most?

This comes down to engagement. How many people like, comment, and share your posts is important, but understanding which posts capture these social actions the most, will help you identify your most successful content.

Which social media network is the best for my brand? 

This question requires some more abstract thinking, but it comes down to which platform receives the most engagement. You also need to think about the kind of content you have to offer. If you’re a news organization and your content involves updating the masses and sharing articles, then Facebook and Twitter might work best. Say you’re a professional photographer looking to showcase your portfolio, then Instagram is where you’ll shine. Are you a musician or comedian? A video platform like TikTok would serve you well. Then, rinse and repeat: analyze the content you post on whatever platform suits your content to learn about which posts gain the most engagement to inform your social media strategy.

How can I have a better performance on social media? 

This is where all these metrics and concepts will come into play. To have a better performance, you’ll want to look at these questions and the analytics you collect in response and use them in your social media strategy. Look to your engagement to find out what kind of content does best, whether it is long or short-form videos, striking images, attention-grabbing text posts, or interesting or informative graphics, and concentrate your efforts towards those. You can analyze impressions, reach, and growth to track awareness and understand your followers demographics to tailor content to meet your audience goals. Observe and interact with people who are talking about your brand or field, and create communities that care about the products or services your company provides. Look to your competitors and their strategies to learn from their successes or shortcomings on social.

All of these skills and practices will contribute to your performance on social media and help your content stand out to people who should know who you or your brand is!