Today we’ll talk about the most important social media KPIs that you should track. You’ll see the most must-have KPIs here, but keep in mind that according to your brand’s current needs and future strategies, you might need to add some more to your list.

With great content and customer success stories; you build strong, personal, and long term relationships with your followers, and social media KPIs are used to keep track of revenue, reach and overall ROI coming from those followers so that you can look into the ways of increasing leads, generating more revenue and expanding your brand.

Ask these questions for yourself first:

• Am I reaching the right and qualified audiences?
• Am I engaging with right and qualified audiences?
• How many of my followers are looking into my product/services and becoming my customers?

Realize that each question can be answered under these 3 areas:

• Reach
• Engagement
• Conversions

✨ Related article: Which is more important: Reach vs. Impressions

If you’re not familiar with such terms, please check the article for the ultimate glossary of social media terms every marketing person should know!

Let’s look into what gives us what.

KPI’s for reach:

Reach shows you how many people come across your post since it went live. The impression is about the number of times that post showed up in someone’s feed since it went live.

Audience Growth Rate:

% Growth Rate : ( new followers/total followers ) x 100

Audience Growth Rate measures your follower count in a specific given period. You can measure how quickly your audience grows on your social media channels by comparing months, weeks, years, etc.

Post Reach:

% Post Reach : ( post views  / total followers ) x 100

Post reach shows you how many people have seen your post since you published it. You can compare your posts and find trends on what kind of content works or what time of the day gets more reach.

Social Share of Voice:

%SSoV : ( mentions / all other mentions ) x 100

People follow you, they like or comment on your posts and they also mention it either directly with a @ or indirectly. If you count your mentions and calculate your Social Share of Voice, you’ll realize how many people (both your followers and users who don’t follow you) mention your brand over your competitors. And once you find that ratio, you’ll be able to decide how relevant your content is in your market.

KPI’s for engagement:

Engagement is all about interactions. Let’s find out KPI’s for likes, shares, retweets, and more.

Applause Rate:

%Applause Rate : ( likes / followers ) x 100

Applause Rate lets you find out how many people like your posts compared to your total followers. Keep track of the applause rate of your content and you’ll have a better idea of what kind of content makes people like your posts so you start sharing the right content.

Average Engagement Rate:

% Average Engagement Rate : ( (likes + comments + shares) / followers ) x 100

The Average Engagement Rate goes a little deeper than the Applause Rate. Here, you’ll sum up all the likes, shares, and comments relative to the number of followers of your brand. Of course, the higher the rate, the better!

Bonus articles:

• How to calculate engagement rate on social media?

• Explained: How to calculate and boost Instagram engagement rate

• Your average Twitter engagement rate: Everything you need to know

Amplification Rate:

% Amplification Rate : ( shares / followers ) x 100

You know when people share your content on their own feeds, they share it with their own networks. This simply means that they care about what you’ve shown them, plus they want their network to know about it, right?

Amplification Rate is measured by counting the shares for a post of your brand for a specific period of your choice, dividing them by your total number of followers, and multiplying it by 100.

As you calculate your Amplification Rate, you’ll realize the details of your most shared contents and start building upon them. Just like the Applause Rate or Average Engagement Rate, the higher this is, the better.

Virality Rate:

% Virality Rate: ( shares / impressions ) x 100

Everyone wants to be viral but everyone actually is! Remember; the impression is about the number of times your post showed up in someone’s feed since it went live.

Virality Rate measures the number of people who shared your post relative to the number of people who saw it. You take a reporting period, you count the total number of impressions and shares for a specific post, divide shares by impressions, and multiply by 100. This will tell you how viral that post went!

✨ Related article: What is social media viral marketing?

KPI’s for conversions:

How many of my followers are looking into my product/services and becoming my customers? Conversion answers this. How effective are you on social media? Are your followers doing what you asked them to do?

Conversion Rate:

% Conversion Rate: ( conversion / clicks ) x 100

Conversion Rate is the simplest answer to the question of ‘Are your followers doing what you asked them to do?’ You post something with a Call-to-Action link. They click on it as you ask them to. The higher the Conversion Rate is, the more loyal your audience becomes, and the more confident you become of your social media content.

Click-Through Rate (CTR):

% CTR : ( CTA Clicks of a single post / impressions ) x 100

Click-Through Rate is the rate people click on your call-to-action links.

Bounce Rate:

Let’s say your followers click on the CTA link but then they leave the landing page without completing the CTA on the page. This means they are bounced back. They didn’t finish. Keep track of your bounce rate for organic and sponsored content. You’ll realize what works better, what doesn’t work, whether your audience is the ideal one, or should you change some of your targets?

The lower the rate, the better!

Cost-Per-Click (CPC):

CPC : ( ad spend / clicks)

Cost-Per-Click measures the amount of money you pay per click on sponsored social media content. It gives you much better insight compared to your total budget. Keep track of your CPC’s to understand whether your investment is efficient or not.

Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM):

CPM : (ad spend / impressions)

Cost per Thousand Impression measures the amount of money you spend after 1000 people see your sponsored content. This is not to understand if your investment is efficient or not, but to forecast your future campaigns.

Having a high bounce rate is no good but it’s still good that you realize it.

Well. That’s a wrap everyone! Keep in mind that your weekly or monthly social media report takes all these areas into consideration so you don’t need to worry about calculating and finding them manually. Start using Sociality.io for very easy & breezy reporting. Check yourselves here!

Thank you for reading everyone!
Till next time…