August 23, 2018
If I told you “hey, my clients’ latest Facebook post received 30 link clicks”, would you be impressed?
30 doesn’t sound like a lot to the average person. Even for a big international company, 30 would sound fairly low. But for a small business, 30 would be considered as a huge achievement.
Regardless of your brands’ social media standing, you should be tracking metrics right from the get-go. You might ask, “why is it important to see how many people liked my Facebook post?” or “why do I care how many people are commenting on my Instagram post?”.
Tracking your social media analytics is important because it tells you what’s working (or what isn’t), how people are responding to your content, and ultimately provides you insight into how to further grow your business.
Which stats should you track?
To answer this question, you need to think about which stats matter most to your brand. There’s so much analytical information out there that it would be a headache to track them all! What’s your goal for implementing a social media strategy? Is it to increase website referrals? Then you should be tracking link clicks. Are you trying to build relationships with customers? Keep track of follower growth and engagement. Do you want to increase your brand awareness? Keep your eye on reach & impression numbers.
What should your stats look like?
This is where it gets tricky. There’s no specific answer to what your stats should look like - every brand is different!
Ideally, you’ll want to always be growing - which means increasing followers, engagement rate, and website referrals (and ultimately conversions!). Now, that’s not always realistic. Every company has their off-month every now and then, and that’s just the reality of it! If you’re actively tracking your analytics data, you’ll start to notice patterns; slow summers, high converting holiday months.
It’s good practice to always be aware of how your competitors are performing on social media. Are they growing faster than you? What’s their engagement rate like? Are they actively engaging with their audience? How often are they posting?
What’s a good engagement rate?
First of all, what is an engagement rate? It’s a metric that measures the response and interactions you’re receiving from your audience. Factors of engagement rates typically include likes, comments, shares, but can also include link clicks, photo clicks, and more depending on the social platform.
Luckily there are general standards for each platform. The engagement rates for each platform are:
Instagram: 3%+
Facebook: 1%+
Twitter: 0.1%+ (0.2-0.9 reactions per post per 1000 followers)
LinkedIn: 0.054%
However, if you find your brand exceeding these numbers every month, set your own standard. Set higher goals for yourself every month and try to beat them!
What’s a good follower growth?
Social media follower growth varies significantly on many different factors - company size, industry, platform. For example, brands in the beauty industry will likely have larger follower growth than brands in the construction industry - largely due to the number of beauty and lifestyle influencers on social media these days.
The median annual follower growth per channel is:
But again, if you find yourself surpassing these numbers - set new goals for yourself. Always be growing!
What’s a good conversion rate?
Before you start gathering data on your conversion rate, you need to determine what a conversion is for your brand. Is it a sale? A newsletter sign-up? A submitted form?
Across most industries, the average conversion rate is 2.5%; however the top 25% of businesses have a conversion rate of at least 5.3%.
So for every 100 visitors to your site, you want to aim for 2-3 sales/newsetter sign-ups/form submissions. Whatever your conversion is, get 2-3 of them!
With all that said, it’s best to do your research when starting to track your analytics. Every industry is different, so it’s important to know what the standard is for each metric. Insider tip: we provide monthly social media analytics for all of our clients and let them know what’s going well and how we’re going to improve and grow for next month. It’s important to always be growing, so if you notice your numbers decreasing, change your social media strategy!
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