Key Engagement Metrics of Social Media and How to Increase Them

Imagine a world without social media. It’s hard. Right?  

Social media platforms are not just content sharing platforms; they shape culture, build communities and bring humans closer. That is why marketers love researching on social media platforms. They have a phenomenal volume of data about users, how they behave, what they like, where the most attention is, and thus where to get the most leverage.  

But not every bit of data is useful for every company. That is why it is important to filter the key metrics which will get you a high definition picture of engagement on your social channels. So which ones to focus on?  

When someone thinks of social media metrics, we instantly think of likes, shares, and comments.  

Well, certainly these are high-quality indicators, but there are others which a successful social media marketer in 2021 trusts to measure the impact of content and marketing strategies.  

In today’s post, we will list down the most insightful and reliable social media metrics to help you figure out engagement and how to increase them.  

Don’t forget to mix the best combination to get the most valuable information about your social media progress.  

1. Reach  

What is Reach? 

How many unique accounts a social media post is exposed to is its reach. Reach can also be used to measure the number of unique users exposed to a profile/page, campaign post, or a specific type of post (videos, pictures, etc.).  

How to improve Reach? 

The first thing you should ask is whether you even need to increase reach to fulfill your business goal. The top situations where increasing reach is beneficial are: 

• Brand awareness campaign  
• To get more leads into the top of the funnel 
• Campaigns where you have not tapped out the potential market 

Increasing reach on social media channels organically is hard. But it is feasible.  

• You can ask your current audience to share your content in their community.  
• Make more entertaining and valuable content for your audience. 
• Make it interesting and rewarding to follow your profile  
• Create content that starts communication and drives engagement.  

To increase reach on social media paid campaigns are more effective than trying to increase reach organically. 

2. Impressions  

What are Impressions? 

When a post appears in a user’s feed, that counts as an impression. Although it is not required that the user actually interacts with the post to be counted as an impression. This might not be the case every time because it may vary with different networks.  

How to improve Impressions? 

The truth about impressions is that this KPI is difficult to improve. As content creators don’t have control over anything that determines the KPI. The simple way to improve impressions is to focus on improving reach. Refer to the previous section to get more ideas.  

3. Likes, comments, shares/retweets 

All these are engagement metrics. Engagement metrics are used to track how your audience is interacting with your content and how frequently.  

What are likes, comments, shares/retweets? 

We all know what likes, comments, shares, and retweets are. Anytime when an audience member likes or hearts your post, it sends a signal to the social media channels that your content is loved by consumers.  

Also Read: Define Your Target Audience for SEO with These 7 Steps

Similarly, when an audience comments or shares your post in their feed, it indicates the health of your audience (how responsive they are and how many of them are your real followers).  

How to improve likes, comments, shares/retweets? 

Likes are the easiest to get for a social media post. There is very little friction, sometimes the audience just clicks on the post unconsciously.  

So to increase the number of likes or reactions on your post is to create content that gets the most likes in your niche and try to create more content of a similar fashion and theme.  

To increase more shares and retweets, create more content that your audience will wanna share. To create content that your audience feels motivated to share, you must understand what makes them tick.  

Here is a list of psychological reasons that pushes the audience to share content on social media: 

• Bring entertaining and valuable content to their followers 
• Build stronger relationships 
• Define themselves as a person 
• Make them feel a part of their preferred community 
• Support causes they care about 

Generally, the posts which get the most comments have: 

• A strong opinion 
• Engage audience emotionally 
• Make them think 

Try including at least one if not all three of the above elements to get more comments and replies on your posts.  

4. Volume (share of voice) 

What is Volume? 

Volume is one of the easiest social media metrics to track and understand. It is the part of the conversation about your brand online compared to your competitors. Tracking the volume is not just counting the number of posts about your brand, it’s about how many people are interested in your brand and are talking about it.  

Also Read: 7 Steps to Make Your Ecommerce Business Successful

How to improve Volume? 

If you look at it simply, increasing volume means increasing brand awareness. There are many creative ways you can use to amplify the conversations about your brand or campaign.  

• Create authentic, high quality and engaging content 
• Post regularly. It is very important to be consistent on social media  
• Give a persona to your brand 
• Choose platforms wisely. Use them all if required. 
• Get more people to follow your social profiles 
• Connect with your community 

5. Link clicks and conversions  

What are link clicks and conversions? 

When an external link is provided in a social media post and a user clicks on it that is a link click.  

Conversions are when someone purchases something from your website. Social media conversions occur when an interested customer comes to the website via a social media channel and buys your product or service in one go.  

It is easy to track the conversions and other statistics related to link clicks in Google analytics. Just go to acquisition>all traffic>channels>social (in the default channel grouping). Here you can track the click-through rate, amount of traffic from each channel integrated, and other stats.  

How to increase link clicks and conversions? 

While sharing links, primarily, make sure that you put relevant links in your posts. Even if the post content is not directly related to the link, you can add links that provide value to your followers.  

You can share the same link repeatedly, just time out the repetition at a considerable and non-irritating interval.  

Use emojis and call to action to drive attention to the link and hence increase conversions.  

That’s it. These are the top 5 social media engagement metrics you should track to have a firm understanding of your audience. This will also help you to carve out a solid social media strategy for the future.  

There are several other metrics that enterprises use to track their social media progress, CTRs, engagement rate, and others.  

Are you looking to amp up your business social media accounts? Look no more. With the right mix of entertainment and information, we not only create engaging content but also track the impact using reliable metrics.  

Just drop us a mail with your expectations and our social media marketing team will revert in no time.