What social media metrics matter most?

With ongoing algorithm changes, bot cleanups and paid advertising on social media, it can be a challenge to articulate campaign success.

For social media managers, it might seem enticing to report on vanity numbers such as “likes,” retweets and impressions to show quick progress and to keep clients happy. However, those numbers can be easily manipulated and hard to re-create, and they can lead to stagnant social media campaigns.

Providing your client with sustainable, actionable metrics can prove significant return on investment and can be trusted for accurate insight to guide strategy.

Instead of pumping your campaign with the data equivalent of sugary, caffeinated beverages (which will lead to an inevitable crash and burn), you should track actionable metrics.

When reporting on social media analytics, focus on the important factors—and avoid misleading figures. Here’s how:

1. Analyze your reach. Reach represents the unique number of people who saw your content at least once. Unlike impressions, reach counts the number of individual people who saw your post. This is important because it demonstrates that your content is reaching a clearly defined number of users and eliminates guesswork.