3 Social Media Engagement Metrics You Should Be Measuring

Do you want to make the most out of your social media marketing? Social media engagement metrics can help you accomplish this.

You’re not getting the most out of your social media platform if you aren’t tracking certain metrics. Keeping your eye on certain social media metrics lets you know how well your social media account is performing.

You, too, can know more about your footprint on social media. You can know exactly how many people you’re influencing and what posts drive the most attention.

Just keep track of these 3 key social media engagement metrics.

1. Reach

Your social media account’s reach is the amount of people who have seen your social media content. Reach ultimately captures the potential size of your audience.

It’s important to know how many people are coming across your message. Reach lets you know this by tracking how many people have seen your content.

The reach number can even tell you a lot about other social media aspects of your social media presence. If you pick the critical action or engagement number (like the number of clicks, retweets, replies, etc.) and divide them by reach, you can calculate an engagement percentage.

Your reach does not tell everything about your social media engagement. It just shows the audience that’s seeing your post. This is opposed to the audience that’s actually engaging with your posts.

Reach is not the same thing as impressions. Your reach on social media is the number of how many people see your content. Impressions are the number of times your content was displayed.

Having an impression simply means your content was delivered to someone’s feed. This does not mean they saw your content. One person can see the same piece of content more than once, so reach is a more reliable number to know how many people you’re reaching.

However, reach is not the only way you can determine how many people are looking at your social media content. The following will also help you:

2. Follower Growth

In order for your social media presence to be successful, you must attract a following. Keeping track of your follower growth allows you to measure the growth of your popularity on social media.

Every social media platform has a “follow” option. Facebook has likes, but Instagram and Twitter both allow you to “follow” the accounts you like. That way, that account’s content will show up on their feed and the follower can see more from the account they like.

It’s one thing to press “like” on a certain picture. Gaining a new follower is a bigger compliment than leaving a comment. It shows that the person wants to get updates on your social media content.

Track your follower growth on a weekly or monthly basis. This growth will give you insight into how well your content is performing on social media.

In order to determine exact numbers for your follower growth, you must do some math. You need to divide the number of followers gained in a month by the number of followers you had at the beginning of the month. This number will give you a growth percentage.

Instagram lets you know how many followers you’ve gained on a per-post basis. That way, you can see which posts attract the most followers and which other ones do not.

As for other social media platforms, you’ll have to investigate which posts attract the most followers. What makes people follow you might shock you, but it’s important to determine what kind of content keeps people coming back for more.

By following an account, you’re essentially saying, “I want to see more of this.” As a social media user, you want to build a relationship that not only keeps your current followers happy, but attracts new followers as well.

Your follower growth isn’t the only way you can determine how many people are listening to you. The next social media metric will give you a lot of insight into who’s tuning into your messages the most:

3. Engagement: The Holy Grail of Social Media Engagement Metrics

If there’s anything important to know about social media, it’s engagement. Engagement lets you know how many people are participating in a conversation about you or your brand.

Social media engagement does not boil down to a single interaction. Think of engagement as more of a relationship – it’s long-term and you want the other party to feel fulfilled. It’s about creating an open line of communication between you and your audience over an extended period of time.

Most social media platforms allow you to like, share, or comment on content. All of these actions tell you different things about your content and your brand.

Engagement lets you know who’s sharing your content. Twitter lets you retweet posts onto your own Twitter profile. Facebook lets you share content onto your profile.

Comments, likes, and replies tell you who is responding to your content. You’ll be surprised by some of the content that generates the most responses from internet users.

It’s essential to respond to the comments and replies your social media account attracts. Doing so increases brand loyalty and sales. It also increases the likelihood that people will remember your brand later on.

Be sure to respond in a timely fashion. Consumers expect a brand’s social media page to respond within zero to four hours. In reality, it usually takes ten hours for a brand’s social media page to take note of a comment and reply to it.

If people see that your account is interactive, they’re more likely to continue engaging with you on social media. They might tag you in pictures or devote entire posts to you.

However, engagement doesn’t tell everything. People might still be talking about you or your brand on social media. Be sure to search for relevant keywords and brand names to be in the know about who’s talking about you on social media.