By Dane Panes, Writer, SMB Compass
According to financeonline.com, the number of social media users is expected to increase to more than 4 billion by 2021. In this time and day, if you’re running a company and looking to reach your audience more easily, setting up a social media account is the best way to do it. Social media for businesses not only allows you to market your products to the public, but it would also help increase brand awareness.
But how do you know that your social media strategy is working?
One of the many things that marketers track is social media key performance indicators (KPI’s). It tells the owners and marketing team whether the campaigns are effective and generating ROI for your business. As social media continues to play a role in many companies’ digital marketing campaigns, here are seven crucial KPIs to look-out for in 2021.
1. Increase in Followers
An increase in the number of followers is one of the most obvious signs that your social media campaigns are working. It means that more people are getting attracted to your posts and updates. More than that, an increase in your followers’ number indicates that other people are starting to spark interest in the content you’re posting.
Although an increase in your followers or subscribers is good, it’s also important to consider how quickly your follower’s list has grown. The faster your social media followers list grows, the better your social media campaign is doing.
2. Likes and Shares
Likes and shares are among the many KPIs that you should measure to know your campaigns’ engagement. It signals that your content is resonating with your target audience and that they’re finding your campaigns exciting and relatable. The more people feel this way, the more your posts will receive the attention that it needs. Sharing or retweeting a post is a more conscious action. When someone decides to share specific content to their profiles, it means that it is worth spreading to others. In other words, more shares indicate a highly effective social media campaign.
The number of likes and shares also signals social media algorithms that a post generates a lot of attention and thus, displays it on walls of social media users.
3. Comments
Engaging with your followers is one of the goals of social media marketing. When you post something on your social media page, and it sparks a conversation between your followers. It might also encourage others to join in, including those who weren’t following you before that event. The more comments your post gets, the more relevant it will be and the better its chances are at showing up in other people’s dashboards.
Moreover, comments also give you an insight into how your audience perceives your brand. You can get useful data in the comments, which you can use in improving your products or services.
4. Impressions
An impression refers to the number of times your post showed up on a user’s dashboard or feed. It tells the potential of a specific post to appear on social media on its own. Your post could appear on someone’s social media because their friends shared the post. It doesn’t matter if they clicked the content or not. As long as the feed showed up at someone’s wall, feed, or timeline, it counts as an impression.
Social media platforms usually have analytics that can show marketers and business owners the metrics for their social media campaigns. With that, they can extract the number of impressions they got from that day, week, or month and compare it to previous data. Essentially, the higher the impression is, the better.
5. Brand Mentions
Brand mentions are another KPI that you should track. When your social media content can spark a discussion on the platform and even on other media where you might not be active, it creates a greater awareness for your brand.
As you’re monitoring brand mentions, it’s also worth checking what the people are saying about your brand. It will help any misinformation, rumors, or other issues about your brand and address it immediately.
6. Bounce Rate
A bounce happens when someone on social media clicks on your call-to-action (CTA) but leaves soon after they arrived at the landing page. They didn’t buy or subscribe to your website.
Your social media bounce rate will also help you compare traffic from the search engines or other social media platforms. A lower bounce rate means that your campaign targets the right audience driving high-value traffic and generating a positive ROI for the business.
7. Conversion Rate
When people are redirected to your landing page after clicking on your content on social media, how many of them actually take action and purchases your products or service or subscribe to your newsletters? Marketers can know how effective their social media campaign is and whether or not it contributes to the company’s bottom line by looking at their conversion rates.
Companies should aim for a high conversion rate for their social media campaigns. A high conversion rate means that you’re delivering excellent content to your audience. Good enough to inspire them to convert into paying customers or subscribers.
Final Thoughts
Social media KPIs give you an idea as to how people see your brand. No matter what social media platforms you’re active in, it’s essential to monitor these KPIs, so you’ll know how effective your campaign is. It will also determine which areas of your campaign you’re doing poorly in, so you can strategize and improve.
Social media platforms are equipped with tools that allow you to track these KPIs. Take advantage of these to make your tracking and monitoring easier and more efficient.
Dane Panes started freelance writing in 2017. Since then, she has written about a lot of topics for different businesses. She started writing for SMB Compass in March 2020 and has been a full-time content writer ever since. Now, she focuses mostly on topics related to entrepreneurship and business financing.