Despite its inherent benefits, social media, like other approaches to marketing, cannot be managed without a strategy. Without proper monitoring of Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, it’s impossible to understand how effective your tactics really are. In this post we will be covering the Social Media KPIs and Metrics that every Social Marketer should measure.

Measuring Reach and Engagement

Your social media posts may be engaging, funny, and intriguing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is seeing or engaging with them. By monitoring your social media reach, including who is liking, sharing, and following your posts, you can see how effective the topics and media mixes you’re focusing on are are. Evaluating your reach may vary based on your channels, like Facebook versus Google+, but documenting and analyzing statistics like number of fans and followers gained, as well as fans and followers lost, in relation to your posts can be a very valuable indicator of social media performance.

KPIs to Measure:

• # of Fans/Followers Gained vs. Lost
• Audience Growth Rate (divide new audience members by total audience members)
• # of Active Followers
• # of Content Likes, Shares and Comments
• # of Mentions
• # of Retweets
• Demographics and Geographics of Audience and Engagements
• # of Posts per Day, Week, Month
• Media Mix (% of Posts containing Links, Photos, Videos, etc.)
• Aggregate of Impressions from Social Posts, Shares and Retweets

Measuring your Key Influencers and Ambassadors

It is widely understood that word of mouth and peer recommendations are the most meaningful forms of advertising. Brand influencers and ambassadors are integral to increasing traffic, building trust and establishing credibility in your space – especially when your influencer has established authority in your industry.

If you haven’t already, there are a number of ways you can identify your key influencers. One of the most common and efficient methods is through an influencer campaign like a social contest or sweepstakes – an opportunity to reward your audience. Contests and Sweepstakes are inherently viral (motivating a lot of sharing activity) and will allow you to quickly and easily identify who is bringing to most traffic back to your site or promotion (ie. your key influencer). Read how to identify your brand’s key influencer and brand ambassadors for more methods. If you’re running an influencer campaign, it will enable you to better identify influencers and thus monitor their performance.

KPIs to Measure:

• # of Shares and Retweets from Campaign (broken down by social network)
• # of Click-Throughs/Referrals from Campaign
• # of Click-Throughs/Referrals broken by Fan/Follower/Participants
• Average # of Click-Throughs per Shared Link
• Conversions from Referrals of Campaign
• % of Extra Visits to Campaign Site due to Sharing

Measuring Traffic from Social Media

Your fans may be liking and sharing your posts, but are they going to your website? Google Analytics has the power to track where your site visitors originate, which can help you understand how much of your web traffic is a result of your social media posts. By looking at the number of visitors your website receives from social media in relation to other sources, like SERPs and links on other pages, and the number of social media pages who visited ecommerce or sales pages, you can evaluate what posts are driving traffic and which ones are falling flat.

Traffic KPI’s to Measure:

• Social Referrals
• Other Referrals (from websites, forums, bloggers, blogs you’ve guest posted to, Q&A sites, etc.)

Measuring Social Return on Investment

Unfortunately, there’s a difference between someone reading blog posts and investing in your company’s products or services. Web traffic is a good start, but when there are no sales, you’re still stuck where you started. Understanding the types of messages that are drawing in potential customers should be a priority, but what prompts them to buy is just as valuable. By analyzing what percentage of your sales comes from site visits through social, you can better evaluate the effectiveness of your social marketing strategy and start giving your team recognition for revenues.

Social ROI KPI’s to Measure:

• % of Traffic from Social
• % of Traffic from Other Referrals (including influencer referrals)
• # Sign ups, inquiries, downloads, etc from Social and Other Referrals
• # Qualified Leads/Customers from Social and Other Referrals
• # of Sales and Revenue from Social and Other Referrals
• % of Social/Other Referrals that Sign up, inquire, download content, etc/
• % of Social/Other Referrals that Become Qualified Leads/Customers
• % of Social/Other Referrals that Purchase

Measuring Paid Social Marketing

Spending thousands on a paid social media strategy may seem like a good investment, but are you getting your money’s worth? Understanding your return on investment is a good way to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing budget and the success of your campaigns; giving insight into where adjustments need to be made. Customer cost of acquisition can be a valuable metric in ascertaining ROI, which is calculated by dividing total marketing costs by total number of customer acquired through social media.

Paid Social KPIs to Measure:

• $ Spent on Paid Social Marketing
• Cost per Lead ($ spent on paid social divided by # of Leads
• Cost per Sale ($ spent on paid social divided by # of sales)
• Revenue Ratio ($ spent on paid social divided by revenue generated)

Aligning Social KPIs with Strategic Business Objectives

Having a social media strategy can provide extensive advantages, but without the right analysis of KPIs, you may be wasting money on efforts that aren’t generating the results you want. These metrics are the many we suggest, but it’s critical that any business start by outlining their overarching business objectives and work from there to align the appropriate KPIs and time-based targets to those objectives.

By keeping track of your metrics you can make continuous adjustments to ensure your social media endeavors are as effective in reaching your objectives as possible.

Are there any social KPI’s or metrics that you’re tracking but weren’t listed here? Share in the comments below!