Likes, comments, reach, impressions… it’s nice to see the numbers rise on your business’s social media, but do you know what these metrics truly mean for you?

Tracking the right social media metrics is essential for understanding what’s working and what needs to change to reach your ideal audience. Without this information, even the best social media strategy can fail.

Not sure where to start? Let’s look at four top metrics to track on popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok:

Metric 1: Engagement

Engagement is the measure of how much people interact with a post. This helps you know how much your audience likes your content and what kind of content encourages them to interact.

·      For Facebook, actions that count towards engagement are reactions, clicks, comments, and shares.

·      For Instagram, it’s likes, comments, shares, saves, and story replies.

·      For TikTok, it’s likes, comments, shares, and saves.

Tip: The engagement rate is found by dividing the total engagement (number of actions) by the number of views, then multiplying by 100 to turn it into a percentage. If your engagement rate is low, try boosting with Facebook and Instagram Stories or a TikTok Live.

Metric 2: Reach

Reach tells you the number of people that have seen your post or ad. This is pretty straightforward to measure, but sometimes difficult to improve; the algorithms are complex and can change without warning.

·      On Facebook, reach is broken down into organic reach and paid reach.

·      On Instagram, reach is called “accounts reached.” As a bonus, Instagram provides demographic information on these accounts!

·      On TikTok, reach is called “reached audience.”

Tip: If you’re trying to increase reach, evaluate your hashtag usage! Hashtags are essential on Instagram and TikTok to help the right people find your content. Hashtags are helpful on Facebook, too, but not quite as impactful.

Metric 3: Impressions

This metric counts the number of times your post was seen. This is different from reach because it counts views from the same user more than once; for example, if someone saw your post five times, all five views are counted for impressions but only one is counted for reach.

·      Facebook provides one straightforward “impressions” metric.

·      Instagram provides “impressions” and also their source—hashtags, profile, home, or Explore. This is helpful to know how people are reaching your content.

·      TikTok’s term for impressions is “total views.” You can dive deeper by checking the average watch time to see if people are truly watching or just scrolling by.

Tip: If you divide impressions by reach you get a new metric: frequency. Frequency is the average number of times each person saw your ad. This is important because ads typically need to be seen a few times to be effective.

Metric 4: Followers

No matter the platform, it’s important to keep track of your followers. Your audience should be growing, even if slowly.

·      Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok all count “followers.”

·      Facebook also counts page “likes,” in addition to followers. Typically, these numbers are quite close as most people tend to like and follow a page they enjoy. However, some people may choose to just like or just follow.

Tip: Most platforms will give you data on your followers with demographics like gender, age, and location. This information can be used to target your ad campaigns.

It’s time to get started!

Get comfortable tracking and analyzing engagement, reach, impressions, and followers, and you’re off to a good start! Once you’re ready for more, you can dive deeper with metrics like amplification rate, virility rate, and social share of voice (SOV).

Need help with defining, tracking, or improving your metrics? We stay up-to-date on the algorithms so we can help you reach your social media metric goals. Contact us today for a FREE 60-minute consultation.