How to Measure Social Media Success

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As is the case with almost any job, you want to show your success. Social media is no different and so it is not a surprise that many social media managers or those working for a social media agency want to clearly show their progress to management or their clients. It’s obvious that we all want to show graphs with a trend that jumps upward or tables that show month over month growth. However, what metrics most clearly show success? And how can you accurately measure social media success?

These questions can be difficult to answer for a variety of reasons. First, there are different metrics to consider when tracking social media progress. After all, different metrics point to different aspects of social media success and there will mostly likely be several that you are interested in tracking. You may be performing well with some metrics, and not so well with others. So what does it mean to be successful in this case? Second, success usually involves some sort of goal setting. However, how do you effectively make sure that your goals are realistic or meaningful? Third, your performance can see highs and lows. So what type of the timeframe should you focus on when determining if you are successful or not? Do longer time periods make sense or only shorter ones?

We will go the entire process of measuring social media marketing success and talk about what to consider when you are trying to answer the questions above. In doing so we want to concentrate on the different steps of the social media evaluation process and exactly what you should consider to accurately measure success. When talking about how to measure social media success it is important to understand what metrics are actually telling you and how to best go about goal setting.

How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance

If you are looking for various ways to measure your social media marketing efforts, you have probably realized there is a lot you should take into account. The social media evaluation process is more than just showing growth related to some certain metrics but rather involves being able to show that your performance is above average or excellent. This means you are not just tracking your own progress but that of other profiles you need to benchmark yourself against.

In all, you probably need to be able to explain why you identify certain metrics as being the most relevant for the success of your efforts and how best to present them.There can be a number of other factors that you also need to take into account such as the different timeframes you will analyze, explaining why you have chosen certain metrics and timeframes, as well as how to present everything in reports that are understandable.

In order to help you navigate all these things to consider, we have broken the entire process into 4 different parts. In order to effectively measure social media marketing success, you need to follow these steps:

Determine what metrics are important
Use research to set realistic and accurate goals
Set up your long- and short-term tracking
Create an in-depth reporting process

We will discuss these four parts in more detail and provide you with some of our tips for each one. It is also important to mention that using a social media tracking and evaluation tool is most likely a necessity if you really want to do this at a professional level. As we will discuss in the sections below, a social media tracking and evaluation tool can help you to with all the steps listed above.

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Step 1: Determine what metrics are important

We have all heard about the importance of social media metrics. From follower growth to engagement rates to views per impression, metrics can help us show how our profiles are performing. But what metrics should we measure in terms of showing social media success? The easy answer is those that help show progress in the area(s) that are important to you. If you are a relatively new company and want to simply grow your following then metrics such as follower growth rate and reach are important metrics. Or if you are more established and want to make sure you content is really resonating with your audience, maybe you are interested more in engagement or post interaction rates.

This means that determining what metrics you want to use to measure social media success should be based on the goals you have for a particular time period. This means it is crucial that you understand all the different metrics and KPIs that are often mentioned when talking about social media. Keep in mind that there may be different social media tools that calculate metric in different ways.

Metrics and KPIs tell you different things about your performance based on what is important to you. These can and probably will change during different stages of business growth. You should always be able to clearly explain why certain metrics are relevant for showing your success. You may also be wanting to explore correlations between metrics, especially if you are having success in some areas and not others. For instance, are you generating engagement but not gaining new followers? Correlation between different metrics can help give you a better idea about what you content may be achieving and where you may have blind sports, so it is important to find a social media analytics tool that explore these correlations.

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So, what metrics should you consider using? There are different metrics that you can choose depending on your goals and you should always think carefully about what metrics are telling you about your performance. In our opinion, there are probably 6 core metrics you want to pay attention to and track over a long period of time no matter what your goals are. These 6 core metrics can be divided into different areas: profile growth, reach, and interactions. For profile growth, you should focus on two metrics in particular, the total number of followers you have as well as your follower growth rate. In terms of reach, we recommend looking closely at metrics such as reach per day and impressions/view per posts. Lastly, post interaction rate and watch time for Reels are important to track to see how well your content is performing in terms of generating engagement. Together, these metrics will help you understand how well your profile is growing, the reach of your content, and the ability of your content to generate some sort of action.

These are just some of the core metrics you should be tracking, and there are probably many more that you will identify that are important measurements of your performance. Also remember that it takes more than just choosing metrics, but you also need to be able to actually track and measure them. This then brings us to how to measure social media metrics. You can measure these by yourself with a calculator, but this is time consuming and you may make mistakes. It is best to use a specialized social media tool not only because it saves you time, but it will accurately measure multiple metrics over the different timeframes of your choosing.

Finally, there is also an issue about how to measure success of a social media campaign that also relates to using a social media tool. Various campaigns are important to measure by themselves. This is because campaigns often have very specific goals and there is a need to evaluate your success. The metrics you choose are important in this regard as well. For example, you may want to focus on overall brand awareness. In this case reach or follower growth would be important metrics to track that reflect that goal. Or you are looking to drive interactions and a metric like engagement rate would be key. The point is that if you are wondering how to measure social media campaign success, you should be able to zero-in on individual campaigns along with your overall progress as a whole using different metrics.

Step 2: Use research to set realistic and accurate goals

It might sound obvious, but goal setting is an important step to consider when thinking about how to measure success on social media. However, your goals should be based on data and not some random number you pick. Setting goals that are either to easy or too difficult to reach doesn’t really help you judge success. Therefore, the overall evaluation of social media performance relies heavily on accurate benchmarking. But what does this mean?

Benchmarking should be focused on comparing your own profiles and performance to other profiles that are similar to you. This means that they are focused on the same industry, field, or content niche, and are at least somewhat close to your own profiles in terms of size. Finding similar profiles to benchmark against is the important first step to emphasize here. Our advice is that you should ideally find as many profiles that are similar to your or are known competitors as you can. Having at least 5 similar competitors or content creators is ideal, but more is almost always better. You also need to choose the social media networks that are relevant for those competitors. Are you active on only one social media profile or six different ones? Remember, you may have 10 competitors, but you are all active on 5 different social media networks that means you need to track 50 social media profiles and not only 10.

Once this is done, you need to identify the metrics that you are using for a comparison and then decide how you want to conduct a benchmarking analysis. There are a few different ways you can consider to assess your performance. For one, you can simply benchmark your performance for the key metrics you have chosen against the top 2 or 3 performers in your industry. This gives you a clear goal to reach that is based on top performers. You can also consider taking averages of key metrics from all the competitors you are tracking. For instance, perhaps you are tracking 10 or 20 different competitors and want to know what the average post interaction rate is in order to set a goal that exceeds this average. Keep in mind that this requires you to track enough profiles so the average is actually representative.

While there are a lot of tools that say they offer benchmarking capabilities, you should always be aware that not all tools are made the same in this respect. Benchmarking is taking averages of metrics from various accounts to show you an overall average that you use as your benchmark. For this reason, benchmarking is greatly enhanced with a tool that allows you to track and analysis an unlimited number of profiles. With a tool that offers unlimited profile tracking, you can add more data points to your benchmarking analysis which should give you more confidence that you are truly setting accurate goals. Also be sure that the tool you are using can track the metrics important for you.

Step 3: Set up your long- and short-term tracking

One key factor in learning how to measure social media effectiveness is through utilizing both long and short term tracking. Setting up your tracking process sounds like a no-brainer in terms of tracking social media progress, but there are different timeframes you should look at to make sure you are getting an accurate picture of your success.

Different timeframes may show different levels of progress based on a number of factors. This is important to keep in mind when considering how to measure the success of a social media campaign, which would involve a more short-term tracking strategy. You have probably run various social media campaigns before whether it is to highlight a specific product or service or if you are promoting some new deal. In these cases, it makes sense to judge your success on a more limited basis since many campaigns are only for a shorter period of time.

Long-term tracking then can be focused more on overall performance, especially when it involves benchmarking yourself against your competitors. When it comes to long-term tracking, you may not want to focus so much on specific highs or lows, but rather how you gained or loss ground compared to other similar profiles over longer stretches of time. This can help you identify more confidently the areas where you remain weak so you can go about addressing them. Our tip for the short term then is to look at individual posts in the short term to see what is performing well, what is not, and why that might be the case.

This makes using tools to measure social media success important. This goes beyond simply benchmarking in a short time period and involves being able to adjust timeframes and access historical data. Tracking can also help you see where you are falling behind and what you can do to change that. For this reason it is important to make sure that your social media analytics tool just doesn’t excel in benchmarking but also can give you content optimization insights. This includes finding the best times to post, optimal hashtags to use, top content formats, or other insights into what content is performing. Remember, tracking is not only showing the affects of what you did, but also gives you an idea of where you need to improve.

Various charts and graphs that related to social media metrics and performance.

Step 4: Create an in-depth reporting process

The last part of understanding how to measure social media marketing success is by being able to show your progress clearly and confidently. All of the steps listed above are not as effective if you cannot put it all in a report. This means that you should think carefully about what should be included in a report based on what is important to show. A social media evaluation report allows you to highlight your progress in the various tables, charts, graphs that you want according to the metrics that you have identified as most important.

You should remember here that customizable with different options for presenting data and various metrics to track allows you to present your data the way you want it. This can help present a more comprehensive picture of your social media success showing nuance as well as how different metrics have progresed and why that may be the case. It may be the case that a report shows underperforming metrics alongside other metrics that are doing well. Reporting is not just about showing the good, but also being transparent about your results and then presenting a plan to change it.

Similar to benchmarking and tracking, reporting is something you have to do on a regular basis. It can even be daily or weekly. There are a few things you should be on the lookout for in terms of social media reporting tools. For one, automated reporting features as part of a social media analytics tool can be helpful in the entire social media evaluation process. This means that you don’t need to manually put together reports every time but that the tool does it for you automatically. Another important feature is having AI integrations that add descriptions to your reports explaining what each graph/table/charts means can be a time saver, especially if you need to present reports a few times a week. Don’t forget that reporting can take a significant amount of time, so finding efficiency features in your analytic tool is important. Lastly, being able to share reports through links or in different formats is a nice feature to have if you need to constantly keep management or your clients updated.

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Measuring your Social Media Marketing Success

The evaluation of your social media marketing activities is important for every social media manager or those working in a social media agency. This requires a complete strategy that includes a strong understanding of your goals and the different ways to measure them. Above all, it often requires the right social media tool that allows you to accurately benchmark, track, and reporting your progress.

Fanpage Karma is a leading social media tool that excels in the benchmarking and reporting of your social media performance. It offers powerful analytics features that can help you find content optimization opportunities and track your progress. Best of it, you can track and analysis an unlimited number of profiles, which is perfect for those serious about data-based analytics. Moreover, its research, community management, monitoring, and publishing features are all part of this industry-leading social media tool. You can try all these features for yourself with Fanpage Karma’s free 14-day trial.

There is also a free weekly webinar that provides an in-depth overview of the core functions offered by the Fanpage Karma social media tool.