When it comes to running a successful online store, a strong social media marketing strategy is critical!
By understanding how best to leverage your social media strategy, you can plan to get more out of the content you share. When you keep track of important social media metrics, it’s easy to take your posts to the next level.
Many new entrepreneurs and online store owners become overwhelmed by the prospect of decoding complex social media metrics. Fortunately, the tools you need to understand your account strategy are easily accessible and even easier to use. You can use an in-built social media analytics tool to find all the information you need.
Where should you begin assessing the effectiveness of your social media presence? Here are our top 5 essential social media metrics you can start tracking for your online store right now.
1. Check your content reach & impressions
First, you need to understand your reach and impressions. These metrics relate to the number of users who see your content online, regardless of whether they follow your account or whether they engage with what you post.
With both metrics seem similar, there are a couple of important differences:
• Reach calculates the number of unique users who have seen a piece of content you’ve shared.
• Impressions calculate the number of times your content has been viewed on a social media platform.
Typically, your impressions will be higher than reach as a single users can view your post multiple times.
Your content reach can be an important indicator of your overall social media marketing approach. Reach analytics and social media impressions can reveal a true picture of your virtual audience and its scale. You can even track social media performance by assessing which posts earn the most reach most easily.
The more new users you can reach with your content, the more effectively you’ll be able to build brand awareness for your online store. This is essential if you plan on delivering future marketing campaigns. In the short-term, it could help you generate interest and sales for your business, looking beyond your chosen social media platforms.
2. Track your engagement rate
Your social media engagement rate is another one of the key performance indicators for social media success, especially as an online store. This metric evaluates how people interact with your content, from liking and saving posts to leaving comments and sharing with friends.
The engagement metric is designed to offer clear insight into the conversations you start. Typically, engaged consumers interact with your brand online, later becoming paying customers for your business. A high engagement rate could foster account growth or a sales boost. Engagement metrics will show you how many users interact with your content.
Engagement is widely considered one of the most important metrics on social media. The more you understand your engagement rate, the more you can work to build it over time. This could open up new opportunities for your business going forward. It could even end up contributing to a better audience growth rate!
The good news? There’s no need to calculate your engagement rate manually! With Plann’s advanced analytics, you can instantly score your engagement rate over specific time periods and for specific pieces of content, too.
3. Know your audience demographic
Measuring social media metrics isn’t just about performance. You can also access key metrics relating to audience demographics, helping you develop a stronger understanding of who you’re marketing to every time you share something new on socials.
By keeping track of trends and patterns in your audience, you can create content with your target audience in mind. This can offer valuable insight into who your followers are and what they might want to see from your account. It may also help you make informed decisions if you want to run a paid advertising campaign.
Audience insights and demographic information may help you learn more about the gender, location, and age range of your average follower, alongside other details. You can use this data to influence your brand’s content and chase greater customer satisfaction than ever before.
As an online brand, understanding the demographic of your audiences allows you to better tailor your marketing efforts towards your social media followers’ interests and behaviors. This is the secret sauce to boosting sales from social media!
4. Review your audience growth rate
Your social media growth rate is an excellent indicator of how well your content is working. You can use this statistic to determine the success of your existing social strategy or make plans for a new marketing approach.
On social media, your growth rate should take a variety of considerations into account. Data includes key details like your total follower count as well as your follower growth rate. If your audience is growing, you’re reaching a wider pool of users and potential customers!
By reviewing your follower growth rate, you’ll be able to recognize new followers and pursue more traffic and engagement. A strong growth rate is a sign of a successfully developing account, while a low or negative growth rate could reveal that your strategy needs more work. Either way, knowing what you’re working with can help.
5. Find your conversion rate
Conversions are critical in ensuring that you can transform followers into a paying customer base. This social metric clearly shows how your social media efforts can translate to more sales and opportunities when you approach marketing wisely.
Depending on the social media platforms you track, your total conversion rate may include clicks on your paid ads or website traffic you earn. It may even involve referral traffic and other metrics with a focus on converting customers. Conversions consider how many social media interactions are involved in your purchase journey.
Social media conversions are highly impactful for ecommerce businesses. Conversion metrics can help you identify which content types, styles, and formats are most useful for advertising your product or service and getting people interested in buying. This helps you plan carefully, use ad spend effectively, and get more value for the time you spend on social media.
Things to keep in mind when tracking metrics
Paying attention to social metrics can make a big difference in how you understand and manage social data for the good of your account, now and in the future.
Whatever tracking tools you use and whatever key details you rely on, it’s important to remember that knowledge can’t work alone.
When you’ve done the work to track metrics on social media, you need to find ways to use this data for improvement. As a social media manager or online business owner, you need to thoroughly evaluate social media metrics, then use this data to guide ongoing decision-making.
Remember that your social media strategy aims to drive sales and boost your revenue. So you need to make sure you’ve got the right tools and support in place to supercharge your social commerce efforts!
When you learn to track social media metrics well, you can make your social media campaigns operate as a foundation for your community building and brand engagement approaches. Soon, you could start getting more engagement for your account and interest in your content, helping you earn more money and foster a loyal customer base, too.
Boost your strategy with Plann
Are you looking for an easy way to start tracking social media metrics and turning what you learn into action for social success as an online business?
Sign up today for a FREE 7-day trial of Plann Pro, and make the most of your social media efforts with the ultimate all-in-one social media suite by your side.
