When it comes to social media performance, there are a host of statistics that give you an indication of how well your content or channel is performing. But these numbers aren’t always a true reflection of what is actually happening below the surface.

Join us as we talk about what social media metrics you should use to measure success.

Followers

Probably the most common number people use to measure the success of a social media profile – but this doesn’t actually tell you much.

We can see why it’s popular – it’s easily accessible, everyone is able to see the number of followers a profile has, and in theory, the more followers you have, the more exposure you get.

But that isn’t always the case. How many profiles do you see with hundreds of thousands of followers, but only a handful of engagements on their posts? What is one million followers, when your posts only get 25 likes?

Top tip: refrain from using the follower count to measure the success of your profile.

Impressions & Reach

Impressions are the number of times your posts have been seen in total, whereas reach is the number of unique times your post has been viewed.

Here’s a breakdown:

• Five individual people viewing your post equals a reach of 5
• If those five people viewed your post five times each, that equals 25 impressions

Using impressions and reach is a great way to get a better understanding of how many sets of eyes have viewed your content.

It doesn’t however give you a full story of how your content or profile is performing. Similar to followers, what is the point in having 50,000 impressions, if only a fraction of those people viewing your content are engaging?

Top tip: use impressions & reach to get an understanding of how vast your audience could be.

Engagement

Engagement is one of the most important things when it comes to social media, it is your golden ticket to success.

Engagement can come in many forms depending on the platform. But the most common are likes, comments and shares.

The more engagements you achieve improves the chances of the social algorithms pushing your content, which in turn gives your content a higher likelihood to be seen. The more your post is seen, the more chance people will engage.

Top tip: when posting on social media, think if your content is going to be something your followers would want to engage with.

Engagement Rate

Now we’ve established engagement is the best metric to measure, how can we get an even better understanding of what that engagement means? This is where the engagement rate comes in.

Engagement / impressions (or reach) X 100 = engagement rate

Using the engagement rate allows you to obtain how active your audience is. It can be an incredibly powerful stat for smaller pages that may not receive loads of engagement.

A post with only ten likes can be a huge success depending on how many people have engaged, compared to the total of people who have viewed it. It is far more beneficial to have a profile of 100 followers, with 10 consistent members who engage, in comparison to having 10,000 followers with only 50 people who engage.

Summary

Knowing what each metric means is the best way to get a true understanding of what the numbers on your social media profiles are trying to tell you. Having that knowledge allows you to dig a little deeper into the success of your profile, or give a hint at what can be improved.