What started as a medium to help a group of friends connect, soon became a medium used by businesses to spread awareness about their products and services. I am talking about social media platforms. How quickly have businesses adapted to the idea of using social media to not only post about their products and services but also to use it as an advertising platform. These businesses are not just large organisations. Over 50 million small businesses with or without the help of a social media marketing agency use Facebook alone to connect with their customers.

With so much importance given to the usage of social media for marketing, you need to be sure that your efforts in social media marketing are showing results. To identify this, you need to pay attention to the following key metrics to evaluate your social media posts.

1. Average Engagement Rate

The average engagement rate is often measured for a single post. It is the number of engagement you received for a post out of the total number of followers. This engagement can be likes, shares, retweets and comments. When you measure this for each of your social media posts, you get an idea of how well the content you posted is performing among your followers. You can use the following formula to measure the engagement of your posts:

[(Total number of likes, shares/retweets and comments) ÷ (Total number of followers)] × 100

With this formula, you will find the average engagement per follower. You can use the same formula to find average engagement per posts, average engagement per total impressions, average engagement per day and so on by just replacing ‘total numbers of followers’ in the formula.

2. Reach Rate

Reach denotes how many people have come across your social media post. It is a number that generally holds a large chunk of your potential audience within as a lot of people will come across your social media post. There is a huge difference between reach and impression. Impressions are the total number of times your content was displayed on the social media platform to a user whereas reach is the total number of people who saw your post. The difference here is that the same person might see the post twice and it will account as two impressions. However, the reach will still remain as one. Reach is basically the number of users or accounts who have received the post in their newsfeed. To identify your reach rate, you first need to check your social media account’s analytics section and get the number of reach, then use this formula:

(Total reach) ÷ (Total number of followers) × 100

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3. Followers Growth Rate

The higher your number of followers, the better is your brand visibility. When you measure the following rate at a set interval of time, you find out how many followers you gained in a given time period. This will give you an idea of whether the content you were sharing at that time is attracting more people or not. To get the number of followers growth rate in a given period, use this formula:

(Net new followers) ÷ (Total number of followers) × 100

4. Share of Voice

Share of voice is a metric that measures how often and by how many people is your business brand being mentioned. There are two ways in which your brand can be mentioned. People can mention your brand directly by tagging you, for example, ‘@Spacebar’ or people can tag you indirectly by simply mentioning your brand name ‘spacebar’ in their conversation. To find the mention of your competitors and your business you can use apps such as Ahrefs.  To finally find the share of voice rate, use the following formula to measure your share of voice rate:

(Your brand’s mentions) ÷ (Your brand’s mentions + Competitor’s brand mentions) × 100

5. Conversion Rate

Social media marketing is not just used for customer engagement. Now almost every social media platform has an option to create sponsored posts where businesses pay to social media platforms for featuring their ads. If you are using sponsored posts, it is essential to find out how many conversions are taking place through it. Finding this information will help you analyse how well your campaign performed. To track your social media conversions, you need to follow the subsequent steps:

• Add a URL Shortener to the social media post with a call to action to make it traceable.
• Add cookie on the audience’s device by adding the code for the same in your website and asking for permission. This will help you to connect the user and the campaign.
• Conversion for social media is considered when the user clicks on your call-to-action, such as ‘book now’. ‘shop now’. So to find the conversion rate of your social media, your conversion is equal to the total clicks you receive on these CTA buttons.
• To track your campaign and check the conversions that happened through the campaign, use the following formula:

Total clicks(conversions) ÷ Total impressions × 100

Social media marketing may seem like a strategy that needs fewer efforts, but it is actually the opposite. You need to be regular in your posting and have witty content to keep your audience engaged. These metrics are a few of the many that you need to keep a tab to create a successful social media marketing strategy. To know more about how you can enhance your social media posts, get in touch with a social media marketing agency.