Social networks : how to know you’re performing well ?

👉 From well known corporate brands to start ups and digital natives brands, social media strategy is a must-have! Having access to a global online platform to promote your brand, your products  or your company is an undeniable asset. But launching social media actions will quickly plunges you into a jungle of statistics, metrics and KPIs sometimes difficult to grasp and analyse. In this article we’ll walk you through the differents ones to follow, and we will sort them by strategic goal in order for you to know if you are performing on social networks !

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Needless to say that with different goals and strategies comes different KPIs. To measure success  your tracking has to follow a precise goal, of course. We will then divide the article in 5 parts to match the different phases of your analysis and the different goals of your strategy. This is why we’ll do it by answering the following questions :

• Are you visible and known ? (do people see and know your brand or products?)
• Are your engaging ? (Do people react to your content, do they show interest ?)
• Are you converting ? (Do people actually pursue this interest in your brand and are ready-to-buy ?)

After that we’ll talk about tracking and analysis but also market Intelligence.

Analyze Visibility

The first element you need to know to measure your social media performance is your online presence. Are you visible out there ? How many people know about you ? To answer this question you can analyze several metrics :

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Audience size

Depending on the social Network, measuring your reach (how many people have seen your Ad/ post) is looking at the number of views or impressions. But there is a slight nuance to it.

Your number of impressions corresponds to how many times your content has appeared in people’s feed.

Your number of views is the number of times people have watched it. If it is a video there is a minimum number of seconds take into account to be considered as one view. This minimum depends on social medias.

You can then measure your audience by counting how many people usually see your content, but you can also measure it by counting the people that see your brand page or profile. This is why you can also look at the number of views of your page or how many time your page appears in people’s search results, to have a more precise analysis.

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Audience activity rate

If you had a chance to better grasp the size of your audience, you might also wonder if this audience is quite active on social media, counting on the fact that it will probably make it more engaged or ready-to-buy. Thus, you can look at your activity rate.

Certain tools, such as SemRush Social Media Tracker will give you this metrics that can be really useful to refine your visibility measurement.

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SEO

Social media also plays a role in your SEO strategy. Certain brands have a better ranking with their social media page than their website. This metrics is even more useful of you have a social selling strategy in place.

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Rate engagement

Now that you are sure that you are visible, people know you, or at least they heard of you. Your next questions are certainly is my audience qualified? Am I touching the right persons ? Are these people actually interested in what we do ? How many of them ? To answer all of these questions you can simply look at these 3 KPIs :

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Reactions, comments, shares, mentions

When you post a content and people react to it, they are indirectly saying that it interested them. Sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad one, but they were not indifferent. Take a look at how many people have liked or comment your posts and compare them to the number of people that have seen it. You’ll then get a ratio of people that have shown an interest.

Next, take a closer look to the ones that have share your post or mention you. It is less of a passive action. It is more engaging because those are the people ready to talk about you. They are not just interested they are involved and oftenly trying to show support.

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Number of followers

Another metrics of engagement is the number of follower. People that are following not only have once liked your content, they want more! They don’t want to miss your news and are showing a long-term interest in your brand.

By following the evolution of this KPI you can also analyze your retention and acquisition rate on social media.

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Engagement rate & Bounce rate

Your engagement rate is often composed by the addition of likes, comments and shares on your post, but here again this metrics depends on the different social media and sometimes even on the tools you’re using.

Your bounce rate is the percentage of people quitting your page / profile right after entering it (without going any further) This is also an engagement metrics because it will help you measure the number of people that you succeed in making them stay. A good bounce rate for social media, according to Neil Pattel is bellow 50% on average. But it also depends on your Industry :

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Keep in mind that here we are talking of the bounce rate of your website taking into account the visitors that came from your social networks. Now to talk about the bounce rate of your social media profile/ page (the number of people bouncing right after seeing your profile, without going further to look at other posts or stories), it is supposed to be lower than 60% on average.

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Count Conversion

You know the size of your audience and how much of them are engaged, now it is time to go further and see how many of them are actually ready-to-buy. Yes some of them are engaged and like your brand but maybe not at the point of buying. Maybe they are interested in the same topics than you but are not really Sales qualified for your Brand. This right here is the difference between a engaged follower/ viewer and a MQL (Marketing qualified lead).

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Traffic : the ones that go to your website

One of the best tool to do so is GAnalytics. There you can have a precise outlook on the traffic of your website and more precisely the ones that come directly from your social media. By analyzing the proportion of people that comes from you Facebook Page, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter or even Pinterest and Snapchat you’ll be able to know is you perform (in converting them) and on which social media you perform better.

You can than work on your CTAs and other redirections and identify on which social media your target is.

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Time per page & bounce rate : the ones that stay and the ones that leave

Once you’ve identify the ones that comes on your Website, you can follow this segment of your traffic to learn more about the rest of their journey.

To know how long they are visiting your website, you can look at the time spent per page, or the average time on your pages for unique visitors.

You can also compare it with the bounce rate, to know how many of them leave after consulting only one page.

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Social selling : the ones that buy !

If You are having a social selling strategy you’ll also have access to a lot of metrics directly on the different social media. Some of you may have Instagram shopping for example, or do exclusive sales lives or even organize meetings with personal shoppers. If so you’ll have more precise metrics on the ones that actually buy. Real sales conversions !

To go a step further, you can measure these social media sales with a tool like Agorapulse's Social Media ROI. You can easily combine data from your Agorapulse and Google Analytics (GA4) accounts, to create customized reports illustrating the sales impact of your organic campaigns on social media.

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Tracking & Analysis

Finally, you have know a better view of your whole funnel: visibility, engagement and conversions, you can know compare each performance KPIs of each phase, depending on your goal. Because if there is thing true about social media performance is that it is good to measure it and know how well we did, but it is also necessary to compare it and know where we stand.

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Compare to competitors :

On several social media you can now compare your performance with your competitors, and see how you rank among them. This will not only gives you a better outlook on your market but also a better outlook on the strategies that works well on your target. Best thing is when your social media ranking reflects on your market share ! Here on LinkedIn for example, you can go on Statistics > Competition to see how you perform compare to the competitors you have identify.

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Compare to previous periods :

In addition of knowing where you stand among competition, you might want to measure your own progress. All the social media KPIs quoted above can be declined in evolution metrics. This way you can analyze the growth of your audience, the evolution of your engagement rate, etc. and then investigate what worked and what didn’t, what actions changed this results.

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Compare to other campaigns :

By stepping back, on a more global view you might also want to compare your social media campaigns results with your other campaigns. This way you will be able to know if it is a primary channel of acquisition for you or not. One good way to do so is to compare ROIs with different campaigns, but also on a more long-term approach you can include other statistics like the number /ratio of MQL for example.

Still with Agorapulse, you can compare your KPIs by campaign, or by social media network. This allows you to analyze your results with granularity, and adapt your social media strategy accordingly.

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Market Intelligence

Finally, there is some social media KPIs that aren’t to measure performance but that plays a big part in maximizing it. It is part of your research for strategy & content creation. You can watch for the Top Hashtag or thoses in process of becoming one. The same goes for other social media, looking at the #Toptweets or top topics can really help you grasp the present and future trends and optimize your performance on social media.

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