Are you one of the 41% of small businesses that rely on social media to drive revenue?
There’s no denying that social media marketing is a cost-effective way to reach new customers, build your brand’s profile and inspire sales. But simply posting content and crossing your fingers isn’t the smartest way to maximize the impact of social media marketing on your business.
But, by knowing which social media metrics you should be tracking as a small business, you can proactively review your social media analytics, pinpoint what is and isn’t working and focus your time on initiatives that will move your business forward.
Below, we dive into the nine social media metrics you need to know about, why they matter and how to incorporate these metrics into your social media reporting.
Reach: Increase Your Contents Visibility
• Goal: Awareness
• Why it matters: Understand how many users are seeing your content and pinpoint which types of content are most effective in organically boosting your brand’s visibility.
If you want to track the number of users who are seeing your content on social media, you need to be measuring reach. Across all social media platforms, reach is a helpful brand awareness metric that indicates how widely distributed your content is.
The more users you reach, the more likely you are to inspire engagement from these users and move them down the buyer funnel towards conversion.
As a small business, boosting the reach of your social media content within your local area is key to driving store visits and sales. Plus, small e-commerce brands can benefit from strong reach metrics, making it easier to turn your viewers into followers and, ultimately, customers.
🔥Hot tip: many social platforms allow you to segment your reach results by followers vs. non-followers. If a post is reaching a high number of non-followers, there’s a good chance you’ve produced a high-quality post that has the potential to grow your follower count and potentially boost your profile visits, website clicks, and conversions.
Impressions: Get More Eyes on Your Content
• Goal: Awareness
• Why it matters: Impressions reveal how ‘sticky’ your content is and how many times it has been viewed, even if the same user has viewed it multiple times.
If reach is the number of unique users who see your content, impressions are the total number of times your content is shown on social media.
Typically, impressions are higher than reach as one user can see your content multiple times. It’s also important to note that impressions are a passive engagement metric, meaning a user doesn’t have to click on or engage with your content to count as an impression.
Tracking impressions alongside reach metrics ensures you’re gaining a holistic view of how far your content is being distributed and whether it’s being prioritized in social media algorithms.
Engagement: Gain Likes, Shares, Comments and More!
• Goal: Build trust
• Why it matters: An engaged audience is more likely to trust, remember and preference your small business against your competitors.
Engagements are any action users take on your social media content. This spans everything from low-impact engagements (such as likes) all the way to high-intent engagements (such as saves, shares and comments).
A high number of engagements signals to social media algorithms that your post is relevant and interesting to users. This boosts the chance of your content being shown to other relevant users and potential customers, too.
Our tip? Aim to spark organic conversations in the comments of your posts with a strong call-to-action in your caption. Not only does show the algorithm gods that your content is engaging, but it boosts the chance of relevant new users discovering your small business on social media.
👀 Keep reading: Discover 10 TikTok video ideas that will increase your engagement.
Video Views: Harness The Power Of Video
• Goal: Awareness
• Why it matters: Video content is a high-performing content format on social media, giving your small business the ability to boost your reach (without investing in paid advertising).
To grow your audience organically as a small business, you need to harness the power of short-form vertical video on social media. From Instagram Reels to TikTok videos and YouTube Shorts, tracking your video views gives you an indication of how many users are seeing your content.
While going ‘viral’ and scoring thousands of video views won’t instantly translate to a boost in sales, this is an important first step in building relationships with potential customers.
🔥Hot tip: Pay attention to trends in your video views analytics and use these insights to improve your content. Do longer or shorter videos gain more views? What video topics tend to attract more views? Are voice-overs or text overlays more effective in grabbing attention?
Audience Growth Rate: Boost Your Account Followers
• Goal: Engagement
• Why it matters: A growing audience is key to scaling your business, indicating that your social media content is working to reach and engage new users.
How many new followers is your business scoring each month? By tracking your audience’s growth rate, you can understand if your brand is continuing to attract new followers each month or not.
While new followers don’t always translate into new customers, a growing follower count can indicate that your business is gaining the attention of new pools of social media users.
The key is to ensure these users align with your ideal customer profiles. There’s no point in skyrocketing your follower count with users based in the wrong location or those who have no interest in purchasing from your brand.
🔥Hot tip: Dive into your audience demographics data to assess if your social media followers align with your ideal customer profiles. Check the age, gender and location of your audience. If this is aligned with your ideal target market, you’re on the right track! If not, it’s time to pivot your content to attract more relevant users.
Average Response Time: Build Meaningful Connections
• Goal: Engagement
• Why it matters: Half of consumers who engage with brands on social media are reaching out with a customer service query.
Social media is fast becoming the preferred customer service channel for consumers. As a small business, reducing the time it takes for customers to receive a response from your brand is key to boosting brand perceptions and improving the customer experience.
On messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, you can track your average response time and work towards badges (such as the ‘very responsive’ badge).
Our tip? Set up automated responses such as saved replies and FAQs to ensure your customers receive an instant response, even when you’re offline.
Profile Visits: Get Your Audience Interested
• Goal: Engagement
• Why it matters: Visiting your profile is a high-value engagement, signalling that a user is interested in learning more about or contacting your small business.
Your social media profiles are brimming with valuable information about your small business. By tracking how many users are visiting your profile, you can assess if your content is effectively driving users to learn more about your business.
Make sure to look at your profile visits in relation to other conversion metrics, such as:
• Website or link in bio clicks: this shows how many users are taking action and visiting external sites (such as your sales page, blog, newsletter sign-up form or app download page).
• Business address taps: this reveals how many users are pulling up the directions to navigate to your physical store location (an important metric if you’re a brick-and-mortar store).
• Custom button clicks: this shows how many users are trying to call or email your business directly from social media.
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