Any social media strategy that is worth its salt needs to be carefully evaluated. Yet you might be shocked how many advertisers don’t think about looking beyond the data contained on the Facebook Summary page. Although no one can complain about the value of keeping track of these stats (that’s why they are right up front), there’s a lot more useful intelligence to be gleaned from a deeper dive.

Facebook – The Basics

1. Engagement

Engagement measures the number of times people have taken action on your post. Actions may include clicks, shares, comments or reactions.

This is a powerful metric to evaluate how much your audience likes your content. Getting to know the kinds of posts people are engaged with can help educate your content strategy. Better interaction also lets your post hit more news feeds of your followers.

2. Reach

Reach indicates the number of people who saw your post. Changes to the Facebook algorithm also made it more difficult for brand messages to be interpreted organically. So, even though an organization has a large number of followers on Facebook, it doesn’t mean that all of them will see their posts.

You can access the topline info on the Summary tab of your Facebook Insights page and get more information on the Reach tab. This is a useful metric to help indicate the number of people who have seen your campaign or content.

3. Impression

Whereas reach is the number of people who have seen your post, views are the number of times your post has been seen. If an individual saw a single post on three separate occasions, that individual represents an increase of one in the number of hits and an increase of three in the impressions hit.

To see the print results, go to the Posts tab and select ‘Impressions: Organic/Paid’ from the drop-down menu. This metric helps you to understand how many times your ad has been seen. If you divide your impressions at your fingertips, you will get your frequency metric, which is the average number of times a person has seen your ad. This can be beneficial if you are trying to find an ad recall or a brand uplift.

4. Page Likes and Followers

Facebook likes and followers are significant metrics of the audience. Likes are people who have marked themselves as a fan of your Facebook page, while followers have expressed a willingness to see your page updates on their news feed (although the algorithm does not guarantee that they will).

It’s important to keep track of your audience size to make sure you are not losing more fans than you are attracting.

Twitter – The Basics

1. Tweet Impressions

This metric is the number of times a tweet has been seen, either on the timelines of your friends, as a result of a Like, or in a search. The impression information can be found by choosing ‘View Tweet Activity’ in your Twitter Analytics. This metric will help show how your content or campaign has been moved to your followers outside your list to audiences.

2. Engagement

On Twitter, engagement is any action that a user has taken on your tweet, including clicking on a link, retweeting, replying, and so on. This test shows whether or not your tweet inspired others to find out more about it or to share it with others. You can find the interaction data in the Tweet tab. Getting more commitments is a positive indication that people like or want to engage with your content.

3. Top Tweet

You’ll find the top tweet for the current month on the Twitter analytics account homepage. That’s the tweet that made the most of the impressions. It’s a significant predictor of what works well with your audience, whether it’s the type of content, the hashtag used, the day and time of the tweet, or a combination of any or all of these variables.

4. New Followers

‘New Followers’ is a list of new people who have decided to join your Twitter account over the past month. Choosing to become a follower indicates a greater link to your brand than retweets or likes will do. This is a valuable key performance indicator (KPI) for your brand’s overall performance in increasing your audience.

5. Top Followers

The top follower is the follower with the largest number of followers of his or her own who have followed you in the last month. Your top fans are those who have the greatest ability to share or retweet your tweets to others.

6. Top Mentions

This is the tweet you have been tagged with the most impressions. Users behind your top tweets are also good candidates for future influencer promotions since they clearly have a large number of followers and are engaged with your brand.

Instagram – The Basics

1. Impressions

This is the number of times your post has been shown to your audience. Instagram analytics further breaks down this data by displaying the impressions that came from the hashtags, the home, or from the profile. Good use of the hashtag can help to boost your post impressions.

2. Reach

The number of individual users who have seen your post.

3. Interactions

This is the cumulative amount of user activities taken directly on your post.

4. Discovery

Instagram’s Discovery feature helps users to find new, interesting content from accounts that may not be currently viewed. Instagram’s analytics will display the number of users reached through the feature who are not actually following you.

Next Level Metrics

With extra digging and estimation, you can obtain some more useful social media data and formulate KPIs to help measure how well your strategy works from the point of view of visibility, interaction, and consumer satisfaction.

1. Audience Growth Rate

It is true that, as internet access continues to expand globally, brands should expect to see a proportionate rate of growth in their social media audiences. So, quantifying the pace at which your brand is gaining followers is significant, as is comparing your growth rate with that of your competitors.

This is a change in thought from asking, “How much is our audience growing? “To ask, “How quickly is our audience growing? “If you see a flattening rate of growth in your social media audience, it may mean that you need to take steps to reverse the trend.

To measure your audience growth rate, apply your net follower growth to all the previous month’s platforms, and divide that by your total audience on all platforms, and multiply that by 100 (to get it as a percentage).

For comparative purposes, you might consider making the same calculation on the social media channels of your competitors.

2. Share of Voice

Share of voice compares the brand’s social media mentions to all of your competitors. It’s a useful way to see how visible, how important, and how ‘top of mind’ your brand is in the marketplace.

Start by tracking both direct and indirect mentions to your brand over the month, using your handle or name, across all social media channels. (Social media tracking and analytical software will simplify this process.) Do the same with your competitors. Divide the total number of mentions for all brands (including your own) and multiply it by 100 to hit your voice percentage share.

3. Applause Rate

Share of voice compares the brand’s social media mentions to all of your competitors. It’s a useful way to see how visible, how important, and how ‘top of mind’ your brand is in the marketplace.

Start by tracking both direct and indirect mentions to your brand over the month, using your handle or name, across all social media channels. (Social media tracking and analytical software will simplify this process.) Do the same with your competitors. Divide the total number of mentions for all brands (including your own) and multiply it by 100 to hit your voice percentage share.

4. Amplification Rate

The rate of amplification is the rate at which your audience shares your content with their networks. It’s a KPI that shows the desire of your audience to connect and interact with your brand.

Add up the cumulative number of times a post has been viewed by users over the month. Divide by your total number of followers and multiply by 100 to get the amplification rate for your post.

5. Virality Rate

There is far more to determining the content of a post than the amount of likes it has received or even the number of times it has been posted. One post’s potential to go ‘viral’ is best expressed by measuring the percentage of how much it was posted out of the total amount of times it was seen. The calculation is simple: the total number of shares is divided by the total number of impression and multiplied by 100. This is the degree of virality.

Let’s say that one post had 400 likes, but it was posted by 2,000 of the 20,000 people who saw it. This indicates more promise than another post that got 1,000 likes but was viewed only by 2,000 of the 200,000 people who saw it.

Final Words

There are hundreds of social media metrics that can be analyzed, each of which can give you more insight into your audience, their interaction with your brand, and how and when they want to obtain information from you. Metrics will help you recognize some of the most influential brand champions and provide you with fresh and varied ways to connect with them. Analytics metrics give more than just KPIs for your social media strategy. They are the resources that digital marketers need to create meaningful relationships with their consumers.