By Jennifer McDougall
Social media metrics are essential for marketers, but they can be challenging to understand. Here’s a breakdown of the most common social media metric terms and how they work together to tell you how well your posts perform.
Engagement
Engagement is a metric used to track the level of interaction between your audience and content. It’s important because it helps you determine whether or not people are interested in what you’re posting on social media, which can indicate how well your business is doing.
For example, if you have 100 followers on Instagram, but only 10 of those followers have liked any posts within the last month, then that means 90% of your audience is not interacting with anything they see from your account. However, suppose 100% of those same 100 followers have liked at least one post in the past month (or even more). In that case, that shows some interest in what’s being shared and might lead someone who doesn’t follow yet but sees previous interactions with a low amount followed by a high engagement rate would choose to subscribe as well!
You measure engagement by looking at comments and likes on your posts.
You measure engagement by looking at comments and likes on your posts.
Comments are one of the most important metrics to measure engagement, but they aren’t the same as likes. Unlike likes, which indicate that someone has seen your post, comments show that a user took the time to share their thoughts with you (and potentially other users) in response to a specific post. If you can get people responding to your content regularly, then it means they care enough about what you have to say to take time out of their day and contribute something meaningful back!
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times your post has appeared in someone’s feed, whether they’ve seen it or not. It’s important to note that impressions don’t necessarily mean views because a user may have scrolled past your post without seeing it. Impressions can also include times when the same person sees your post multiple times. For example, if you share an article on Facebook and someone reads it two days later because they were tagged by a friend who shared the link, then this counts as two separate impressions for that post even though there was only one view.
The more people who see your content (impressions) and interact with it—by liking or commenting on posts or sharing them with friends on social media—the better chance you’ll build awareness for yourself or your brand in those users’ minds.
Impressions are the number of times your post has appeared in someone’s feed.
Impressions are the number of times your post has appeared in someone’s feed.
Impressions cannot be analyzed in isolation from engagement and reach. For example, if you publish a new post or share one from another source, there’s no guarantee that it will get shown to anyone. Only after impressions become engagements (likes, comments, shares) can you know how well your content performs.
If you’re looking to measure engagement on social media, impressions alone aren’t enough—you need to consider how many people saw it!
Reach
Reach is the number of people who have seen your post at least once. This can include all users on Facebook or just those who are in your target audience. Reach is calculated by dividing the total number of impressions by the number of people who have viewed your content (i.e., reached).
Reach is the number of people who have seen your post at least once.
Reach is the number of people who have seen your post at least once. It’s a critical metric, but it’s also one that can be easily misunderstood.
This is because reach only counts impressions, not impressions multiplied by view time. So, for example, if you have 300 likes and 400 comments on an Instagram post with 3K views—and 100 people viewed the post more than once—then your reach would be 3K*100 = 300K (or 1 million if we were counting by unique users). On the other hand, if all 100 viewers saw the post only once (even though they liked or commented), then your reach would be 2K = 2,000 (or 10 percent of your total audience).
In other words: Reach is interesting because it tells us how far our content has spread among our audiences—how many different people took notice and interacted with it—but this metric doesn’t tell us anything about how engaged those audiences were with our content or how much they liked/commented on it!
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay Per Click (PPC) is the amount of money you pay to a publisher each time someone clicks on one of your ads. PPC is also known as cost per click (CPC) or cost per impression (CPM). PPC advertising is the most common form of online advertising, and social media marketers must understand how it works to target their audiences successfully.
PPC is the amount of money you pay to a publisher each time someone clicks on one of your ads.
Pay per click (PPC) is the amount of money you pay to a publisher each time someone clicks on one of your ads. PPC is a form of advertising that enables you to pay for each click on your ad. PPC ads are typically shown in text, image, or video format.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of users who have visited your website by clicking on a link in an email or ad, divided by the total number of recipients who saw that email or ad (usually expressed as a percentage).
CTR is a measure of the effectiveness of your ad campaign. It measures how likely it is that someone will click on your ad and visit your site when they see your ad. The higher the CTR, the better!
CTR is the number of users who have visited your website by clicking on a link in an email or ad, divided by the total number of recipients who saw that email or ad (usually expressed as a percentage).
CTR is the number of people who have visited your website by clicking on a link in an email or ad, divided by the total number of recipients who saw that email or ad (usually expressed as a percentage).
If you want to send an email announcing a new product or service, it’s essential to know how likely someone will click through to your site. You can find out with CTR: if 1 out of every five people opens your email, and 1 out of every ten clicks through, your CTR is 20%.
Conversions
Conversion results from a visitor taking a desired action, like clicking through to your site, creating an account, making a purchase, or filling out a form.
Conversions are essential because they show you how well your content is performing. You can also use them as part of your strategy to improve it. For example, suppose people who read about widgets typically buy widgets but not baseball bats or golf clubs. In that case, it’s good customer insight to know that you should add more information about those products in future posts and articles!
Conversions result from a visitor taking a desired action, like clicking through to your site, creating an account, making a purchase, etc.
Conversions result from a visitor taking a desired action, like clicking through to your site, creating an account, making a purchase, etc.
Conversions can be measured in several ways:
- Bounce Rate: The percentage of people visiting your site and leaving within 30 seconds. If you have an extremely high bounce rate, it could mean that your page doesn’t load properly or that visitors aren’t interested in what you’re offering.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Measures how many times people click on an advertisement for your company or product compared to how many times the ad appears. This metric is helpful if you’re trying to boost sales by placing ads on social media channels and want to know which ones are performing best based on engagement rates rather than actual conversions accomplished by these clicks (which might take days or weeks).
Page Views
Page Views: The total number of times people have visited a page on your site. This metric helps get an idea of how many people are visiting each page on your website, but it doesn’t tell you how many unique visitors viewed those pages.
Page views can be used to measure site popularity and engagement, but they don’t provide information about whether or not the content was engaging. For example, a visitor may read half a post and not finish reading it—but because they scrolled to that point in the post, they get counted as “viewing” every word up until then (even if they didn’t see it).
If you’re using goal tracking in Google Analytics, you can also use Page Views under Goals & E-commerce > Ecommerce Settings > All Pages section:
Page views are the total number of times people have visited a page on your site. It tells you how many people have visited each page, but not how many unique visitors viewed those pages.
Page views are the total number of times people have visited a page on your site. It tells you how many people have visited each page, but not how many unique visitors viewed those pages. Social media metrics can help you understand who’s visiting your website and what they’re doing when they get there.
Suppose you’re looking to measure traffic on individual pages within your site. In that case, it may be easier to use page views instead of unique visitors or sessions because it provides a broader picture of how many people interact with them over time. However, you might also see that these terms overlap in some situations; for example, if someone visits multiple pages within an hour (or whatever time period is relevant to your business), all those visits will count toward their session length even though they still only count one “visit” towards the overall session count.
Conclusion
Hopefully, these social media metrics have helped you understand your audience and their interactions with your content. If you want to dive deeper into any of these topics, I highly encourage you to read through the sources below or check out my other articles on analytics.