We’re almost 2 months into the new year, and we wanted to check in to see how your social media marketing is processing this year. If one of your resolutions this year is to up your social media game for your business, you’ve come to the right place. One of the best things about social media is the ability to track almost every single detail through metrics. However, sometimes it feels like there is so much data that it can be overwhelming to know where to start or what to focus on. While each business will have different goals, there are some key metrics we think everyone should be focusing on. Here are our top social media metrics you should be tracking in 2023.

1) Reach

We’re starting with the metrics you’ve probably already heard of and are hopefully already tracking. Put simply, reach is the number of people (unique users) who view your content on social media. We recommend tracking your average reach per post as this can be helpful for benchmarking and creating goals. You should also be recording the reach of each individual post, story, or video so you can see what type of content is getting seen by the most people – this is often a sign of engaging content that resonates with your target audience.

2) Impressions

Not to be confused with reach, your impressions are the number of times people viewed your content. It is often higher than reach because the same person may be seeing your content more than once. It’s a good metric to track in comparison to your reach to see if your audience is returning to your posts – an indicator that it is landing well or contains useful information. Keep an eye on this metric to see how your content is spreading across social networks and what type of content (ex. Instagram Posts vs. Instagram Reels) performs best.

3) Engagement

Let’s move past the people that view your content into how they interact with your content. An engagement rate indicates the number of engagements (likes, comments, saves, shares, etc.) your posts get as a percentage of your audience. You can measure this in different ways: engagement relative to your followers, reach, impressions, and views are the most common. This one is important because most of today’s social media platforms decide what content to feed people based in part on the number of post interactions. A high engagement rate shows that your post resonates with people, while a low engagement rate may mean it’s time to re-evaluate your social media strategy.

4) Audience Growth Rate

Don’t think of audience growth rate as the number of new followers you receive. Instead, audience growth measures how many new followers your business gets on social media over a certain amount of time. Decide on your time frame, take your net new followers on each platform, divide by your total audience, and multiply by 100. This will give show your new followers as a percentage of your total audience which is crucial for benchmarking and tracking your overall social media performance. You can look back to your engagement rates per post to see what content will help you improve your audience growth rate.

5) Videos Views

Videos are becoming increasingly popular on social media, so make sure to implement video content into your social media strategy! We know that videos can take a lot of work to put together so it’s important to know how many people are watching and interacting with them. While each social media platform measures a “view” slightly differently from one another, usually a few seconds will count as a “view”. Again, this metric is a good indicator of engaging content that your audience likes to see and share with their friends.

6) Video Completion Rate

While video views are a good place to start, the video completion rate gives you a bigger picture. How far are people making it through your video? Are they watching all the way through or dropping off after a couple of seconds? These answers inform you about the quality of your content and if it connects with your audience in a meaningful way. Video completion rate is another metric that is particularly important for social media algorithms so we recommend focusing on improving this number to improve your social media presence!

7) Mentions

How much are people talking about your business on social media? Tracking your mentions, also called “social share of voice (SSoV)”, allows you to measure how much of the social conversation you are in and how relevant your brand is to your audience. To do this, monitor your direct and indirect mentions and then compare that to your competitors. To go a step further you can add up every mention of your brand and do the same for your top competitors, add those numbers together to get the total number of mentions in your industry, then divide your business’s total mentions by the total industry mentions and multiply by 100 to get your SSoV. This is a great exercise to remind yourself to interact and engage with those talking about your brand.

8) Sentiment

In 2023, we recommend going even a step further by looking at your business’s social sentiment. While mentions will track the volume of conversation, sentiment tracks the feelings and attitudes of these mentions. Are the conversations positive, negative, or neutral? This allows you to see the bigger picture. For example, a high number of mentions might initially suggest your campaign is doing well, however, there’s a chance there may be negative mentions and knowing your social sentiment will help to improve your strategy.  

9) Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate (CTR) measures how many clicks a post receives divided by the number of impressions. Essentially, you are looking at how many users clicked the links in your social media posts. This is important because it will give you a sense of how many people saw your content and thought it was engaging enough or stood out enough to want to learn more. Your CTR will most likely vary across platforms and will help you decide which type of content your audience finds interesting on your different channels.

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We’re Here to Help!

We hope this blog provided you with some guidance on which social media metrics will be important to track for your business this year! Need additional help with your social media strategy? Check out Bailey Creative’s copywriting, social media, and branding services. And remember, all of our services can be tailored to your specific needs so that we provide the most effective support possible. ​​Fill out our contact form, give us a call at (519) 837-8333, or send us an email at info@baileycreative.ca to get started!

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