Likes, Comments, and Shares: Which Social Media Metrics Matter?

Any successful brand knows that tracking social media metrics is key to boost engagement, reach a wider audience, and adjust their social media strategy to improve their brand’s online presence.

However, many brands are not sure which social media metrics are the most important ones to track. 

With metrics like likes, comments, shares, views, and a host of other information available on social media platforms, it’s hard to know which metrics are the most valuable and which ones are simply “vanity metrics.”

What Are Vanity Metrics?

Many brands waste time, money, and other resources to focus on vanity metrics. These are metrics that don’t actually make a difference for your brand. These include:

• Page views
• Downloads
• Page likes
• Impressions
• Subscribers
• Customer acquisition
• Followers

While these metrics might look good on paper, they’re ultimately insignificant when it comes to your brand’s social media strategy. In fact, they can even do more harm than good.

For instance, a brand that sees an uptake in likes on a social media page might think that they’re on the right track for success.

Likes don’t necessarily correlate with engagement. 

Research shows that a brand’s organic reach on a post is only about 6.4% of its total page likes. This means it’s more important to post engaging content than to accrue likes.

When businesses focus on vanity metrics, they have a tendency to receive a “false positive” in terms of social media success. It’s 1 of the 5+ key mistakes you could be making with your social media strategy. 

What Metrics Should Your Company Track?

Just because these vanity metrics are not crucial, it doesn’t mean that your brand should just stop tracking metrics altogether. 

Your social media analytics are important, but only if you pay attention to the information that matters most: actionable metrics.

Here are a few key metrics that you should track in order to improve your social media strategy.

Engagement rate

Social media growth doesn’t mean anything if these followers don’t actually engage with the content that you post.

You need to track your engagement rate. Use social media analytics tools to determine which types of posts garner the most engagement from your followers. Then, adjust your social media strategy accordingly.

For example, data from Kissmetrics shows that image posts get 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more click-throughs than posts that only have text. 

A brand that rarely posts images might think its social media strategy is working well because of its follower count.

However, if they tracked their engagement, they would realize their images performed significantly better. If they adjusted their social media content to reflect this, they could see a sharp improvement in their engagement.

Likewise, impressions are not nearly as important for your brand as engagement. 

You can have a post on Instagram with a high number of impressions and low engagement. This means that the content you posted was not interesting or engaging enough for your audience. 

If you keep track of your engagement rate, your brand can see which types of content work for your target audience and which types of content don’t.

Track the engagement rate of your brand’s posts to build an audience that is interested in your brand and interacts with your content.

Demographics

As you gain more followers on various social media platforms, it’s important for your brand to see how your demographics shift over time. 

When your number of followers and subscribers skyrockets, it might seem like your brand is growing and accomplishing its goals…but are they?

It’s important to track the demographics of your audience because it lets you know whether or not your followers are a part of your target audience.

If your brand offers products or services geared toward people of a specific gender or from a specific location or age group, you want to make sure your social media posts appeal to this target audience. 

When this is not the case, you need to make changes to your social media strategy so that you can reach your intended audience.

The last thing that you want is to waste your resources marketing your products toward a group of people who aren’t likely to actually convert. 

Businesses that keep track of their followers’ demographics and audience personas spend up to 56% less on their marketing efforts than those who do not keep their target audience in mind. 

Track your social media demographics so that you can make sure your posts are tailored toward your target audience.

Pro-Tip: If you want to really tailor your content to your target audience, engage in social listening.

Impressions-to-reach ratio

While it’s flattering to see that a post your brand made on Instagram has a lot of impressions, this number means nothing if you don’t also consider your reach.

Your brand’s reach refers to the number of unique users that viewed your post or your story. It’s an important metric to keep track of if you want to see which types of posts are the most effective for your brand and improve your ROI.

If your brand has a low impressions-to-reach ratio, you need to step up your content. 

This indicates that the majority of the people who viewed your content only looked at it one time.

A high impressions-to-reach ratio demonstrates that your content was engaging and relevant enough for your audience to watch it more than once. Your brand needs to plan to incorporate similar types of posts into its social media strategy.

When you keep these key, actionable metrics in mind, you will be able to shift your social media strategy so that it has the greatest positive impact on your brand.

Want Even More Help Crushing Your Social Media Strategy?

At Repurpose House, we take your already awesome content and repurpose it into optimized assets to explode your social media. Not satisfied with your metrics on social? Book a call with us today to learn how we can help your crush your content goals.