Which metrics are the most important for success

Vanity metrics on social media include things such as likes, shares, comments, follower count, and traffic. Getting a large amount of likes or comments is the easy part. But, as a business, social media is really not about how many likes your photos get or even the number of followers you have. Social media for businesses is all about SALES! ⠀⠀⠀

Likes and follows may look great on the outside, but they don't equate to or even necessarily correlate with sales. You can have 3,000 likes and 0 website clicks and be worse off than someone with 30 likes and 30 website clicks. So, if likes and followers don't matter, what IS the most effective way to measure social media success?

At AMR Digital Marketing, we measure success using the following metrics:

1. Reach

The number of unique accounts that are seeing your content. This is Step 1 of the sales funnel: Creating Brand Awareness. This is you getting your message in front of brand new eyes who are completely unaware of who you are or what you do! These people don't follow you; they don't engage with your content; they don't even know who you are (yet)!

2. Impressions

The number of times each of your posts are seen. This is Step 2 of the sales funnel: Discovery - on average, people need to see something at least 6-8 times before they make a decision or take action. You want your impressions to be at least 2-4 times higher than your reach! The higher your impressions are compared to your reach, the more times each individual viewer is seeing your content. They may not even be following you or liking your posts, but they are learning about you, and that's what really matters.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

3. Website Clicks

This is the number of people who see your content, click through to your profile, and visit your website. This is Step 3 of the funnel: Evaluation/Intent - These people now know who you are, are interested in what you have to offer, and are ready to learn more. Oftentimes, these people have followed you and/or engaged with your content. But this is not always the case. There are plenty of people who will click on your website without ever following or liking your content on social media.

4. Sales

This is the number of people who found you on social media, visited your website, and ultimately ended up purchasing something! This is Step 4 of the sales funnel: Purchases! This often is a difficult metric to measure from social media - but it's not impossible. A couple of ways to estimate/track sales are 1. Offer a custom promo code on social media. That way, you will know that everyone who uses that code came from social media or, 2. Go to Google Analytics, look up your site's average conversion rate (the number of people who have bought something from you in the past 30 days divided by the number of unique visitors to your website that month). Then take that number and multiply it by the percentage of website traffic that came from your social media channels.

Side note: The rest of these metrics are all available to you for free in your Instagram Insights. All you have to do to access them is to make sure your account is categorized as a business or creator account. This can easily be done in your settings. ⠀

So, while vanity metrics might look good, at the end of the day they don't pay the bills! And if you're a business, these metrics cannot be your sole measure of success.⠀⠀

What metrics do you look at to track your success on social media? let us know in the comments below.

Written By: Analiese Ross, AMR Digital Marketing, Founder & CEO