You've been at that place: your boss asks how the business organization'southward social media strategy is doing and yous know a loftier-level rundown just won't cut information technology. When it comes to measuring and proving your make'south social media success, data speaks volumes — and that's where social media KPIs come up in.

Social media KPIs are measurable metrics that reflect social media functioning and prove social'southward ROI for a business. Put another manner, tracking specific numbers allows your social squad to ensure its social strategy is connecting with the target audition and that your brand is achieving its business concern goals.

Plus, tracking social media KPIs makes reporting back to your boss easier — it's a reliable way to prove to your supervisors that your social media strategy is working.

Go along reading to find out more nigh dissimilar types of social media KPIs and how to track them.

Bonus: Get a free social media report template to easily track and measure performance against your KPIs.

KPI stands for key performance indicators.

Businesses use KPIs to decide performance over time, come across if goals are being met and analyze whether changes need to exist made.

Social media KPIs are the metrics used to determine if a business organization's social media marketing strategy is effective. Basically, they're tracked data related to a visitor'due south presence on individual platforms similar Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or across all social platforms collectively.

Chances are, your social squad sets SMART social media goals. Your social media KPIs should as well be SMART:

  • Specific: Be as clear as possible. For instance, practise you hope to increase the brand'due south Facebook follower count by 500 in the next month? Do you lot want to increase your click-through rates by 20% by the finish of the year?
  • Measurable: Will you be able to track and quantify your progress? For example, during a monthly bank check-in, you should be able to determine how shut yous are to meeting the goal.
  • Attainable: Proceed it real. Set up KPIs that are within an achievable scope.
  • Relevant: Make sure each social media KPI connects to the business's larger goals.
  • Timely: What's the timeframe for achieving this goal and determining whether success has been met? One month, vi months, one twelvemonth?

SMART KPIs will arrive easier for yous and your squad to commit to your goals and consistently work towards them over time. Plus, they make reporting successes dorsum to your boss easier. It's easy to see the wins and the progress!

When setting social media KPIs, be sure they reverberate your company'due south overarching business goals.

But remember, setting KPIs isn't a one-and-done scenario, even when they're SMART. In fact, you lot might even set different KPIs for each social media campaign and each social media channel — this will help you create very specific and information-driven social media reports for all of your social media activities.

You might too desire to think SMARTER. That is, be sure the KPIs also leave room for evaluation and reevaluation. No visitor's business goals are set in stone — that means the social media KPIs you set should also exist able to change over time equally the overarching business concern goals change.

To set and monitor effective social media KPIs:

1. State the KPI's objective

Make it clear how tracking the KPI will help the company reach a specific business goal. Think across numbers and information. How practice the metrics yous're tracking support the business and play into the larger, advisedly designed strategy?

ii. Proper name your KPI

Now that y'all know how your KPI is supposed to support your business goals, decide on a metric that will help you measure out if you're on track. So, for example, if your business is focused on growth and you lot want to build brand sensation on social media, you might desire to brand Facebook impressions 1 of your KPIs.

When yous settle on a metric, make your KPI specific (or SMART) by calculation a value and a timeline to it.

iii. Share the KPI

Now that you lot've decided on an important KPI, don't keep it to yourself. Communicate these KPIs with your squad, your boss and any other stakeholders who should stay upwards to date with your strategy. This will help you lot set up expectations and make sure everyone is aligned on what you're measuring and why.

4. Analyze your current functioning

If measuring social media KPIs is new to your team, make sure y'all collect criterion data. That manner, you tin compare changes over time and know growth when you meet it — and prove to your boss that your strategy is working!

5. Define your cadence

Are you tracking your KPIs weekly? Monthly? Bimonthly? Decide on a design that will help yous conspicuously see growth patterns and developments, and react quickly when things aren't working keen.

6. Review the KPI

Schedule time — perhaps in one case or twice a year — for a bigger review of your KPIs. Are they yet relevant? Are they still helping you run into company goals? Should changes exist fabricated?

Remember: why and how you set social media KPIs could change as the concern changes.

There are many social media metrics, and all could be relevant to your business in different means. To effectively track how your brand'south social media strategy is coming together company goals, endeavor to set up KPIs in each of the following categories.

Reach KPIs

Achieve KPIs measure how many users come beyond your social channels. These users might only interact with the channel passively — reach and engagement are 2 different things. Think of accomplish equally a quantity measurement — reach data demonstrates your existing and potential audience, growth over time and make awareness.

Impressions

This is the number of times your postal service was visible in someone'southward feed or timeline. This doesn't necessarily mean the person who viewed the post noticed it or read it.

Follower count

The number of followers your social channel has at a set time.

Audience growth rate

You want to make sure you're gaining followers, not losing them. Audience growth rate demonstrates how follower count is changing over fourth dimension.

Here'due south a unproblematic formula for tracking it:

audience growth rate equation

Reach

This is how many people take seen a mail since it went live. Accomplish changes depending on when your audience is online and how expert your content is. It gives you an idea of what your audience finds valuable and interesting.

Here's how to calculate it:

post reach equation

Potential attain

This measures the number of people who could see a mail service during a reporting period. Put another style, if one of your followers shared your post with their network, between two% and 5% of their followers would factor into the post's potential reach.

Here's how to calculate potential accomplish:

awareness metrics potential reach

Social share of vocalisation

This metric tracks how many people mentioned your brand, compared to the number of people mentioning your competitors. Simply, it shows how relevant your make is within your industry. You can utilize a social listening tool similar Hootsuite to measure your own and your competitors' mentions during a specific timeframe.

Hither's how to calculate social share of vox:

awareness metrics social share of voice (SSoV)

Social media engagement KPIs

KPIs for social media date mensurate the quality of the interactions with your social followers. They show you lot whether your audience is connecting with what you lot have to say and willing to interact with your brand.

Likes

The number of times followers interact with a social post past clicking the Similar button inside a given social media platform.

L39ION of Los Angeles likes on Twitter

Comments

The number of times your followers comment on your posts. Remember: comments can take a positive or negative sentiment, and so a loftier number of comments isn't always a skillful affair!

Mike's Hard Lemonade Canada Facebook comments

Applause rate

Applause rate tracks but positive interactions or approval interactions. This includes likes, saves, retweets, favoriting a postal service, etc.

Here's how to summate adulation rate:

engagement metrics applause rate

Boilerplate engagement rate

This metric divides all the engagement a post receives — including likes, comments, saves and favorites — by the total number of followers on your social channel. It shows how engaging, on average, your piece of content was.

Here's how to calculate information technology:

average engagement rate equation

Amplification rate

This is the rate of your followers who are sharing your content with their own followers. This metric could include everything from shares and retweets, to repins and regrams. Basically, a loftier distension rate shows that your followers desire to be associated with your brand.

Here's how to summate it:

engagement metrics amplication rate

Conversion KPIs

Conversion KPIs mensurate how many social interactions plough into website visits, newsletter sign-ups, purchases or other desired deportment. Conversion metrics reverberate how constructive your social media strategy is and whether it's leading to actionable outcomes.

Conversion charge per unit

This is the number of users who perform the actions outlined in your social media CTA (visit your website or landing page, subscribe to a mailing list, make a purchase, etc.) compared to the full number of clicks on that given post. A high conversion charge per unit shows that your social media post delivered something valuable to your audience that made them act!

Here's how to calculate information technology:

conversion metrics conversion rate equation

Click-through charge per unit (CTR)

CTR is the percentage of people who viewed your post and clicked on the CTA (call to action) information technology included. This provides insight into whether your content captures your audition's attention and inspires them to human activity.

Here's how to calculate it: Click-through rate (CTR)

Bounce rate

Not anybody who clicks on your social media links will follow through, reading the total article you shared or completing a purchase. Bounce rate is the percent of visitors who clicked on a link in your social post, but and so quickly left that folio without taking any action. Y'all want this to exist low — it signals your content isn't all that engaging, or the user experience you provided was less than perfect.

Price per click (CPC)

CPC is the amount you pay social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram per private click on your sponsored social media post. Track this to meet if the corporeality you're spending is a worthwhile investment.

Here's how to calculate it:
engagement metrics Cost per click (CPC)

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)

This is the amount you pay every fourth dimension ane,000 people scroll past your sponsored social media mail service.

Here's how to calculate information technology:
engagement metrics Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)

Customer satisfaction KPIs

Customer satisfaction KPIs are tracked to see how social media users think and feel near your brand. The sentiment of their interactions with your brand online is direct feedback for your concern.

Client testimonials

Reviews typed upwardly by your customers and posted to social channels like Google My Business or Facebook reviews clearly demonstrate how customers experience about an experience or product. Star rating as well provides a good snapshot of how customers feel about your concern.

Earnest Ice Cream customer testimonials

Customer satisfaction score (CSat)

This metric shows how happy your followers are with your brand's products or services.

You could collect this information through a Twitter poll or Facebook survey, for example, asking one uncomplicated question: How would you lot describe your overall satisfaction with this product? Depending on how yous set up your poll, respondents would charge per unit their satisfaction either numerically (eastward.thou. on a scale from i to 10) or through descriptors like poor, boilerplate or excellent.

Net promoter score (NPS)

This metric measures your followers' brand loyalty. Using a poll or survey on your make'southward social channels, inquire ane question: How likely would you be to recommend this product to a friend? Give respondents the run a risk to answer using a numerical scale or through descriptors similar unlikely, likely or very likely.

Bonus: Go a gratis social media report template to easily track and measure functioning confronting your KPIs.

Get the gratis template at present!

Now that you know the important social media KPIs to track, how will you go nearly tracking them and reporting your successes?

There are a few ways:

Native solutions

Tracking social media KPIs natively — meaning, using the built-in analytics features of individual social media platforms — is one option. They're free, piece of cake to apply and can be a good option for social media managers who are only tracking KPIs for ane or two social accounts.

Social media managers can track KPIs using Instagram Insights, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics, YouTube Analytics, etc. All major social media platforms offering basic solutions for tracking social media performance.

Twitter Analytics Tweet Activity

However, this method is not ideal for teams who manage several accounts across social networks. That'southward simply considering tracking metrics from different sources requires switching between dashboards, which makes it more challenging to compile, compare and analyze results.

Custom reports

Custom reports involve compiling social media KPIs into a unmarried easy-to-read document for your team and your supervisors.

To create i, manually input the data you nerveless across your brand's different social channels into one document. Make information technology visual and digestible. Exist sure to include graphs, charts and examples to demonstrate how your work is meeting the make's business concern goals and affecting the bottom line.

Interested in a custom report template? You tin download our template hither.

Bonus: Get a free social media report template to easily track and measure performance against your KPIs.

Hootsuite

If your make's social media strategy involves managing multiple accounts on numerous platforms, using a social media management platform to runway your KPIs volition make your job easier.

Tools similar Hootsuite make collecting, crunching and sharing information both efficient and effective. Hootsuite tracks operation analytics for all of your social channels and organizes the information into comprehensive analytics reports for you.

Hootsuite Analytics

Source: Hootsuite

Hootsuite's analytics reports are fully customizable collections of data that showcase the data you need. You can create reports for private social accounts or for all the social platforms your make uses.

The interface is interactive — it doesn't require any manual information input, you can simply elevate and drop all of the elements to adapt a unique report that will work for your needs.

To larn more about using reports in Hootsuite, sentry our YouTube video:

Utilise Hootsuite to do all your social media reporting from a single dashboard. Choose what to track, get compelling visuals, and hands share reports with stakeholders. Attempt it costless today.

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All your social media analytics in one place. Employ Hootsuite to run into what's working and where to improve performance.

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