Do you want to measure the success of your campaigns on social networks? If so, you need to know which KPIs to focus on. There are certain key pieces of information that should not be missing from any KPI analysis, as they provide necessary information about your social media metrics.
Analyzing whether you have met your planned objectives is essential so that you can understand what you have done well and what you could improve on your objectives in an upcoming digital campaign.
In the following article, we detail a guide to the 15 most important KPIs for social networks, and how to create social media metrics through these key performance indicators. Do not miss it!
What are KPIs in social networks?
KPIs are key performance indicators. In other words, they are a way to measure the success of your social media goals. By tracking KPIs, you can understand what’s working and what’s not so you can make necessary changes to your marketing efforts. For any strategy carried out on social networks, statistics are monitored and analyzed in depth, since the relevance and impact of their actions are evaluated. These KPIs are used in social networks such as: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and more.
Many interactions are generated on social networks today, which is why companies are so interested in social marketing. And of course, they take advantage of their numerous connections to increase their influence and strengthen their ties with an increasingly large community.
However, how can you evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts? Here are some necessary features that you should monitor closely to evaluate your social media content strategy and drive the growth of your interactions and that of your community.
Necessary characteristics of KPIs in social networks
If social media KPI goals are unclearly defined, incorrect reporting and content actions can occur. Therefore, knowledge of the necessary characteristics of KPIs in social networks is required before your measurement:
- Clear KPI Action Plan: Develop a KPI action plan and list concrete actions in it. This will help you understand what the next objectives of your social media strategy should be.
- Recognize patterns: Correctly configured KPIs allow you to recognize, analyze, and use visible patterns over time.
- Recognize problems and opportunities: KPIs also identify data, solve problems, and discover possible opportunities for improvement in your company.
- Optimization and adjustments: Through consistent monitoring of KPIs, marketing processes and campaigns can be optimized.
- Social Media Optimization (SMO): Measure the social media optimization It is a must-have marketing strategy for any business looking to be successful online.
Importance of analytics and KPIs
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. This is why analytics and KPIs are so important. By doing an analysis of key performance indicators, you can gain valuable insights into your business and identify areas, measure data, and draw conclusions about where you need to improve. Here are the 3 types of data analysis:
- Prescriptive: Prescriptive analysis, which is the most comprehensive type of evaluation, allows us to understand what is happening and how to fix problems and make improvements in the future.
- Predictive: Thus, based on the statistics of previous campaigns and activities, we can predict the performance of future campaigns.
- Descriptive: This is the most basic form of analytics. It simply shows the data that each tool provides us each day: it only shows what happens at a specific moment.
Without measuring KPIs you will not be able to measure your progress against your goals. For example, here are some must-have social media goals that KPIs measure:
- Increase the number of followers on each social network
- Promote engagement and CTAs (call to action).
- Guarantee brand positioning
- Attract traffic to the website (create conversions)
- Offer customer service
The 15 Most Important Social Media KPIs
The KPIs are the measurement components essential for a company to capture and evaluate commercial objectives on the social network. Data from Facebook Business and other social networks provides a wide variety of metrics that can be calculated. Therefore, it is up to you to find out which ones offer you business intelligence.
These are the 15 most important social media KPIs that you should track to measure the success of your campaigns:
1. Number of leads generated
There are several ways to measure the number of leads generated by your marketing campaigns. One of them is to look at the conversion rate of your website. This is the percentage of your website visitors who take the desired action, such as filling out a contact form or making a purchase.
Another way to measure lead generation is to track the number of new contacts added to your email list or CRM system. This will give you an idea of how many people are interested in learning more about you.
2. Cost per potential customer (CPL) rate
Cost per lead (CPL) is a metric that helps companies calculate how much it costs to generate a new lead. To calculate the cost per lead, simply divide the total cost of your marketing campaign by the number of leads generated.
For example, if you spend 1,000 Euros on a campaign and generate 10 leads, your CPL would be 100 Euros. Note that CPL is different from Cost Per Action (CPA), which measures how much it costs to generate a conversion (e.g. sales, signups, etc.)
Cost per lead is an important metric to track, especially if you are in the early stages of your business, when generating new leads is essential for growth.
CPL FORMULA = advertising costs ÷ potential customers
3. Satisfaction rate
This KPI indicates the number of customers you have acquired during a certain period of time. When it comes to customer satisfaction, brand perception must be taken into account, that is, how customers feel when your brand is evoked and how they perceive it in comparison to its competitors.
FORMULA: Sum of scores ÷ total ratings obtained
4. Click-through rate (CTR)
Measuring click-through rate is a good way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and track your progress over time. There are a few different formulas you can use to calculate CTR (Click Through Rate) but the most common is simply the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.
For example, if your ad is shown 1,000 times and results in 100 clicks, your CTR would be 10%. Keep in mind that CTR will vary depending on the context of your ad and the overall goals of your campaign.
FORMULA: CTR % = (Number of clicks) ÷ (Number of impressions)
5. Cost per click (CPC) rate
CPC or “cost per click” is an indicator that measures how much it costs you to get a click on your ad. There are several ways to calculate it, but the most common is to take the total spend on a campaign divided by the number of clicks you have received. For example, if you spend 100 Euros on a campaign and get 10 clicks, your CPC would be 10 Euros.
On the other hand, cost per click is an essential metric, as it shows you the effectiveness of your Paid social KPI. If you have a high CPC, it means you are paying a lot for each click. On the other hand, if your CPC is low, it is understood that you are getting more benefits for your investment. In any case, it’s important to keep an eye on your CPC so you can adjust your ad campaigns accordingly.
FORMULA: Total budget ÷ Number of clicks = CPC
6. Audience growth rate
As the number of Internet users around the world continues to constantly grow, companies also hope to gather the largest number of followers on their social media channels. However, this metric alone is not very meaningful. Instead, marketers should focus on growth rate.
To evaluate the rate of expansion of our audience, we must first choose a reporting period. Next, take the new followers we have acquired during that time and divide them by our total followers.
7. Engagement rate (ER)
First of all, let’s define commitment or so-called “ engagement ”. Engagement rate can be any action a user takes on your social media post such as: liking, commenting, sharing, or clicking a link. Now that we know what counts as engagement, let’s talk about how it is measured.
Simply put, your engagement rate is the number of engagements divided by the number of impressions. So, for example, if your post receives 100 impressions and 10 people like it, your engagement rate would be 10%.
It’s important to note that engagement rates vary by platform and post type. For example, videos tend to have higher engagement rates than photos on Facebook. As for Instagram, Instagram stories and reels have much higher engagement rates than image posts.
Knowing your ideal engagement rate can help you fine-tune your social media strategy and ensure your content reaches its full potential. We leave you 3 different ways to obtain your engagement rate results.
FORMULA:
- Likes + comments) ÷ impressions x 100
- Likes + comments + saved) ÷ impressions x 100
- (Likes + comments) ÷ followers x 100
8. Impressions KPI
Impressions are one of the ways advertisers measure the effectiveness of their ads. An impression is counted whenever an ad is shown, regardless of whether someone clicks on it. Therefore, if a post is displayed on a website 100 times, that would count as 100 impressions.
Impressions can be a useful metric for measuring interest in content, but they don’t necessarily indicate the success of a post. At the end of the day, just because an ad is seen doesn’t mean it’s convincing anyone to buy something.
9. Scope
Although social media reach can be a difficult metric to define, there are some key indicators you can look at to get an idea of how far your content is reaching.
It must be taken into account that the scope itself is not “calculated”. They are metrics that social networks give you.
A more accurate indicator is engagement, which includes things like likes, shares, and comments. This metric can give you an idea of how often your content is exposed to new audiences.
10. Periodicity of publication
If you have a business, chances are you also post regularly on those same networks. But have you ever stopped to think about what is the best time to publish? This management indicator allows you to track how frequently your posts are published on each social network.
In this case, there is no formula as such. The best time and time to publish is the one in which your followers are most active and are most likely to interact with our publications.
11. CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
Cost per acquisition (CPA) is a marketing metric that measures the amount of investment spent on acquiring new customers. To calculate CPA, simply divide the total cost of acquiring new customers by the number of new customers acquired. This can be useful for evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and setting budget goals.
FORMULA:
CAC = sum of investments / number of clients acquired
12. Rate of Return on advertising investment (ROAS)
The kpi ROAS (return on advertising investment) is a metric that measures how much income you have generated for each euro you invested in your content marketing strategy. It is also useful to evaluate the performance of your advertising campaigns and determine whether they are profitable or not.
If your ROAS is low, it means you are not generating enough revenue to justify your advertising spend.
On the other hand, if the ROAS indicator is high, it means that your campaigns are profitable and you are generating a good return on investment.
When you set goals for your marketing campaigns, make sure you are generating positive investment.
FORMULA:
ROAS = SALES REVENUE / EXPENSES
13. Cost per Thousand Rate (CPM)
Cost per thousand (CPM) is a measure of what it costs an advertiser to reach 1,000 people through a given medium. To calculate the CPM, simply divide the cost of the ad by the number of people who have seen it.
For example, if an ad costs 100 Euros and 10,000 people saw it, the CPM would be 10 Euros. CPM is often used to compare the profitability of different advertising platforms. Another example, is if one platform has a CPM of $5 and another has a CPM of $10, then the first platform is twice as profitable.
14. Share of voice (SOV)
When trying to determine your brand’s performance on a social network, one of the metrics you should take into account is Share of Voice (SOV). This metric measures the percentage of online mentions your brand has compared to its competitors. SOV can be a useful indicator of your brand’s visibility in the digital space and whether or not it is resonating with consumers.
There are several ways to calculate the Share of Voice. A popular method is to use Google Analytics. You can set up a custom report that tracks brand mentions across all channels (i.e. organic search, paid search, social media, etc.). This will give you a good overview of how often your brand is mentioned online.
15. Conversion rate
The conversion rate is a measure of the performance of your website or a social network. It is the percentage of visitors who take the desired action, such as making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter. If you’re not happy with your conversion rate, there are several things you can do to improve it. One of them is to make sure that your social networks have quality content, and another is to make sure that your calls to action are clear and concise.
To track it, examine your conversions of all types:
- the number of completed forms,
- downloaded documents,
- registration for an event
- or make appointments.
FORMULA:
Conversion rate = (Conversions or goals achieved / Total users) * 100.
In conclusion, these are the 15 KPIs for social networks that will help you understand the performance of your campaigns, so that you can make the necessary changes to improve your results. If you don’t track these KPIs, you won’t be able to measure the success of your social media campaigns.
In order to establish social media as an important pillar in the marketing mix, in addition to sophisticated campaigns, it is essential to know the most important social media KPIs to be able to show with your reports to what extent your channels contribute to marketing and, in ultimately also to corporate objectives.
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