After establishing your goals and defining your target audience, you need to know how you’re going to measure your success. You need to set KPIs and metrics that’ll guide you at the end of the month, quarter, and year.
Below, we’ll find out why you need KPIs and explore some metrics to choose from to make your social media strategy a success.
What are Key Performance Indicators?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the numbers you’ll look at, at the end of the month or year to see if your strategy is working. If you set a goal to increase the number of people following your page to 500 in six months, then one of your KPIs will be the number of followers.
If you’ll have three hundred followers after six months, then it’ll mean you’re lagging behind your goal. In that case, you’ll need to dig deeper to find out what you can do to increase your followers. However, if you’ll have seven hundred followers, then it’ll mean that you have surpassed your goal and your strategy is working perfectly.
That’s better than just saying you’d like to increase the number of followers on your page and hoping that the gods will hear your cry and answer your prayers.
Now, let’s find out how to set social media KPIs and metrics for your social media pages.
Step 1 Set Your Social Media Goals
We already found out that you need to set social media goals after you decide to launch your business on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or other platforms.
Your goals have to be SMART like the one we just used above which goes like this:
Increase the number of Facebook page followers to 500 in the next 6 months
This goal is specific (increase Facebook page followers), measurable (500), attainable (500 is easy to attain), realistic, and time-sensitive (6 months).
Step 2 Name Your Social Media KPIs and Metrics
It’s unrealistic to pursue all the social media and marketing KPIs that exist today. Start your journey of a thousand miles with one step, two steps, and then keep going.
To help you choose relevant KPIs, classify the KPIs and metrics into these four groups:
- Reach KPIs
- Engagement KPIs
- Conversion KPIs
- Customer satisfaction KPIs
Now, let’s find out all the metrics that fall under each of these categories.
Social Media KPIs and Metrics for Reach
According to Sprout Social, reach refers to the number of people who see your content. Impressions, on the other hand, refer to the number of times the platform displayed your content to viewers.
When you share a post and someone sees it once, that counts as a reach and an impression. Now, your friend goes ahead and shares your post, then the same person who saw it from you sees it again on your friends’ timeline share. That counts as a second impression, but it won’t increase your reach.
Here are some metrics you can use to measure reach:
- Post reach
- Number of impressions
- Number of followers
- Website traffic
Social Media KPIs and Metrics for Engagement
When potential customers interact with your Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok account, they’re engaging with your brand. When people engage, your brand feels alive, relevant, and motivated to keep going. Here are some metrics to measure engagement:
- Likes
- Comments
- Shares
- Clicks
- Mentions
- Profile visits
- Retweets
- Views
Choose from these engagement metrics and set your KPIs from them. If you want to find out whether people are interested in the topics you write about, choose comments, likes, and shares as your KPIs.
Social Media Metrics for Conversions
What do you want people to do when they visit your brand? For the food businesses I help to manage, we always want people to order, buy a plant-based course, or subscribe to our podcast.
So, when people take these actions, we say they’ve converted. A conversion happens when customers take the desired action. If you have a course, people convert when they buy it, sign up for your newsletter, or attend an event you’re organizing to talk about the course.
Therefore, some of the conversion metrics you can pursue with any business include:
- Newsletter signups
- Purchases
- Downloads
Ensure you have at least one of these in your KPIs because they’re what will bring money to your bank account.
Social Media Metrics for Customer Satisfaction
Ultimately, you want customers to be satisfied with your products and services. Because a satisfied customer is likely to return, become loyal, influence their friends to buy from you, and talk about your products online without being asked to.
These customers are not afraid of spreading the word because your product has surpassed their expectations. You can measure customer satisfaction using the following metrics:
- Customer feedback
- Number of User Generated Content
- Sentiment analysis (qualitative measure)
Step 3 Develop a Structured Reporting System
Once you have settled on your KPIs, develop a structured reporting system. State how regularly you’re going to monitor your progress. Some of the questions to answer when developing your reporting framework include:
- Are you going to measure results weekly, monthly, or quarterly?
- Will you create reports in the form of spreadsheets or visually appealing charts?
Finally, use your KPIs and metrics to measure progress and revise or add to your social media strategy.
Case Study: Social Media KPIs and Metrics in Action
All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Similarly, all talk and no-show makes KPIs and metrics a dull game. To make your social media KPIs development journey exciting, here’s a fictional example of how a clothing brand improved after implementing its social media strategy.
| Metric | Before Strategy | After Strategy |
| Reach | 50,000 | 200,000 |
| Engagement rate | 2% | 6% |
| Conversion rate | 1% | 3% |
| Customer satisfaction | 60% | 85% |
By setting specific KPIs, selecting relevant metrics, and implementing data-driven decisions, the clothing brand achieved remarkable growth in reach, engagement, conversions, and customer satisfaction.
Contact Us for Help Establishing Your Social Media KPIs
Have any question about establishing social media metrics and KPIs for your brand? Click the WhatsApp button on your right-hand side and message me right away.