Social media metrics can feel like a minefield. The good news is you don’t need to track everything to understand whether or not your social media strategy is working. A handful of meaningful metrics can tell you a lot about what’s resonating with your audience, what isn’t quite landing, and how your content is working to support your wider business goals.
Let’s break down the key social media metrics every small business should track, why they matter, and how best to use them without overcomplicating it.
1. Engagement Metrics
Engagement metrics show how people are interacting with your content, and they’re often one of the clearest indicators of whether your posts are landing. There are a few different types:
Likes, reactions and shares
These are usually the easiest metrics to spot. A like or reaction may be a small action but it shows that your content resonated with your audience. A share is especially valuable, showing that someone thought your content was worth passing on.
Comments and conversations
Comments are a big green flag, showing that your content has sparked a thought, question or reaction. Bonus points if those comments turn into conversations with your audience and allow you to start building relationships and trust.
Saves and bookmarks
On platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn, saves are a strong signal used by the algorithm for ranking content. They suggest your content is useful, informative, or something people want to come back to later.
When it comes to engagement metrics, make sure you’re tracking your engagement rate rather than total engagement. Engagement Rate measures the percentage of people who saw your post and interacted with it. Therefore, a post with 20 interactions from a small account can be more successful than 20 interactions on a post from an account with a much larger following.
Also, pay close attention to which posts get engagement and look out for patterns. Learn from what performs well when crafting new content.
2. Reach and Impressions
These metrics help you gain an understanding of how visible your content is on social media, and how many people are seeing it. Reach refers to the number of unique people who saw your post, and Impressions are the total number of times your content was displayed, including repeat views from the same person.
Look at Reach and Impressions in tandem with other metrics. For example, a high Reach with low Engagement could mean your content is getting seen but isn’t clicking with people. High Impressions with lower Reach might suggest the same handful of people are seeing your content, which is useful for building trust, but not always great for growing your audience. It’s all about balance.
Keep an eye out for spikes in these metrics. If Reach suddenly jumps, think about what changed. Was it a new format? A different posting time? A topical post tapping into a trend? These observations are helpful for guiding your future content.
3. Audience Growth
Follower counts can be very tempting to obsess over, but growth is about more than just the total count. Your net follower growth (number of new followers minus any unfollows) can give you an honest picture of how your audience is changing over time, and there’s a lot to learn from your follower demographics.
Depending on the platform, you’ll be able to see demographics such as location, gender, age, industry and job role. This allows you to learn more about who your audience is, and make sure you’re sharing content that is relevant to them. One of the biggest shifts you can make in your social media strategy is moving from thinking “what do we want to say” to “what do our audience want to hear?”, and your follower demographics will help you gain this understanding.
Try not to get hung up on the number of followers you have, as quality will always beat quantity. A smaller, more engagement audience will always outperform a large, disengaged one.
4. Website Traffic and Conversions
Social media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A great social media strategy is fantastic, but it means very little if it isn’t working to support your wider business goals, and it can play a big role in guiding your audience towards off-platform actions. That’s where website traffic and conversions come in.
Website traffic from social media
This metric shows how many people click through from your social posts to your website. If engagement is healthy but website traffic is low, it could be a sign that your CTA isn’t clear enough. On the flip side, steady traffic shows you that people are curious and willing to take the next step towards converting.
Click-through rate (CTR)
Your CTR is a measure of how many people clicked your link compared to how many people saw it. A higher CTR usually means your message and the action you’re asking people to take is clear. If CTR is low, take a look at how you’re communicating your message. It may be time to experiment with different wording for your call-to-action.
Conversions
Conversions are the actions that really matter to your business including contact form submissions, newsletter sign-ups, downloads, purchases or booking in a call. Not every social post needs to convert, and that’s important to remember. It’s not unusual for a social media post to support conversion through building trust, creating relationships with your audience, and generating brand awareness, rather than driving them instantly.
Speak To Victress About Social Media Metrics
Tracking social media metrics doesn’t have to be intimidating. When you focus on the numbers that actually matter to your business, social media becomes clearer, calmer and much more valuable.
If you’d like a hand making sense of your metrics, understanding what’s working, or building a strategy, we’d love to help. Drop us a message and let’s chat about how your social media can work harder for you.
