There’s nothing like the validation of a good “like”. Even if you’re just casually posting on social media for fun, seeing that someone enjoyed your content can be such a rush! But likes aren’t the only social media metric that matter – and if you’re looking to grow a community or earn an income, they aren’t even the most important.
In today’s article, we’ll be breaking down the other social media metrics, why you should pay as much (if not more) attention to them, and which metric might be more important for you and your content.
Understanding Other Social Media Metrics 📈
In this article, we’ll mostly be sticking with engagement metrics, like comments, shares, and saves. By now, you should for sure know and understand these social media metrics, but we’ll give you a rundown just in case.
Likes are one of the easiest metrics to get. Viewers can “like” a video, showing the algorithm that they’re interested in it and basically asking the creator for more.
Comments are the next level up. It takes a little more work for a viewer to leave a comment, which is why it’s considered a more valuable metric.
Shares are even more important. Not only did the viewer enjoy your video, but they’re somehow sharing it or sending it with other people. Shares boost your reach without you even trying.
Saves are a newer metric, but still one to keep an eye on. On some platforms, users can bookmark or “save” posts to come back to later. If someone’s saving your video, usually they found it really educational, entertaining, or valuable!
Views are another, often overlooked, metric. This tracks how many people have seen your video. Depending on your content, this could be measured by people looking at it for more than second, or even when people swipe past without watching.
If you’re wanting to earn an income from your content, you’ll want to start tracking at least two of these metrics. Very few creators are wildly successful without monitoring a variety of social media metrics. But you don’t have to track every single metric available. Some just won’t be helpful depending on your niche!
Speaking of, let’s get into finding the right metrics to track.
Which Social Media Metrics To Track 🤔
The main you thing you want to consider is your specific objectives. Depending on the kind of content you post and what you want to get out of them, you’ll want to go into different things.
Objectives 🗃️
If you’re wanting to make a career out of content creation, then establishing your objective early-on is a must. Likewise, those running social media for a brand or company will need to set their objective or overall goal early. This will make the whole social media process easier and guides what kind of content you create.
Your objective doesn’t have to be some long, thought-out statement. It can be a statement or even a few words that describe what your socials should accomplish. If, for example, you’re an author hoping to drive sales to your book, your objective would be “increase sales”. If another author just wanted to get their name out there, their objective would be something about visibility or growing their audience. A third author may just want to share their knowledge and make friends; their objective would be “educate the community and connect with new authors”.
While your social media may have an overall objective, each piece of content may compliment it with a slightly different objective. So the author who wants to increase sales might go Live to connect with their followers, or may introduce a fun new series to expand their reach. It’s fine to have one main goal, but don’t be afraid to deviate from it a little for individual content pieces.
Matching Metrics 🤞
Once you have your objective, go back and think about the function or meaning of each metric. Which one matches with your objective best? Thinking about the authors again, the one creating to get their name out there would mostly look at likes and views. The author that wants to educate and engage would be most interested in comments, and maybe shares or saves.
All social media metrics metrics will help your objective and make working toward your goal easier. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on all metrics and review them, but have one or two you specifically want to drive. And these will be the ones you focus on tracking.
Tracking Your Metrics 🔍
The idea of tracking and analyzing the metrics on each of your posts sounds a lot scarier than it actually is. The main idea is having a designated space to track how your videos performed and compare them together.
We recommend starting a spreadsheet or Google Sheet where you plug in your metrics. Have a column with a description of the video (or the name on the cover, if you have one!) and columns for the metrics you want to track. If there are other elements of your social media you’d like to track, such as followers or the dates and times you post, you can add a column for that too. Give your videos a little bit of time to reach your audience and gain traction before you take down the metrics. Think 3 – 7 days!
This gives you an easy way to track the performance of your content and see which do the best. The beautiful thing with a spreadsheet is that you can incorporate graphs and charts to help you actually see what’s doing well. But for now, start with something simple and build to a more complex tracking system if you need to. You’ll see what you need as you post and track.
Measuring Success 📏
Now that you have a clear understanding of the metrics and how to track them, let’s get into measuring your success.
The first step is calculating your baseline. What’s the average number of views, likes, comments, etc that you get on a video? What’s the best? To really set yourself up for success, mostly focus on one, specific metric for this exercise. Which is the most important, and what is the average for that?
Set New Goals 🥅
Once you know the average, you can start setting goals! We’ve talked previously about goal setting and what to look for but let’s pivot to metrics. You’ll want to set specific, measurable, and achievable goals that you have control over. For this reason, we’ll ignore shares and saves. As a creator, there’s not much you can do to control these! But you have a bit more sway on things like comments, likes, and views.
1. Break Down Your Objectives ✅
Break your objectives down into smaller, more specific goals. Think of the steps you’d need to take in order to get there. Instead of “educate and connect with other writers”, make your objective into at least a few content-centric goals. This could be creating five educational videos a week, following a new writer each week, and commenting on five writing videos a day. These are small, actionable goals that will help you accomplish your objective.
2. Set Specific Targets ✅
When creating your goals, give them a specific, trackable number. This makes them easier to track and helps you know when you’ve really met them. It’s very clear what the examples above are asking. Knowing exactly what needs to be done and when by will motivate you.
3. Regularly Track Progress ✅
Don’t just set goals and set up a spreadsheet! Take some time once a week or once a month to revisit your spreadsheet and your goals. Are you getting closer? Have you met a goal? Even if you haven’t met any of your goals yet, are there any trends in your content and what does well? You may need to make some adjustments to your goals, and this is the perfect time to assess that, too.
One Note ✏️
There’s so little you can control about social media. You can’t make people like your content or share it, which is what makes metrics so stressful. The only thing you can focus on is creating content and staying dedicated. Don’t get too hung up on metrics: so long as you’re creating and staying consistent, they will come.
Analyzing Your Social Media Metrics 👓
We’ve already talked about tracking your metrics, which is the most vital piece. But if you’re like us and you’re just a little extra, there’s some strategies you can use to amp up your analysis and incorporate more social media metrics. Below are some examples!
Engagement Rate Calculation ➗
For our math lovers, you can calculate the engagement rate for each post. Divide the total number of likes, comments, and shares by your follower count, then multiply by 100 to get a percentage. This lets you see how many of your followers are engaging with your content, and can be done for all metrics or individual ones. You can also adjust it to calculate how many viewers engage with your video.
Identify Top Performing Posts 🏆
One of the easiest easiest was to analyze your content is to identify which posts have the best engagement rate and the most of your chosen focus metric. Analyze these top-performing posts to understand what elements contribute to their success, such as content type, format, timing, messaging, and visual elements. Consider incorporating those into future posts!
Shareability Analysis 📩
Are your posts shareable? Analyze the number of shares compared to likes and comments and identify posts that have a high share-to-like/comment ratio. These indicate content that resonates with your followers and has the potential to reach a wider audience. Learn more about shareable content in this article! Whether or not you want to work it into your analysis, making shareable content will help your creator game.
Once you’ve started your analysis, you may realize you want to adjust your goals or find new ones. That’s find! Goals are there to drive and motivate you; change them as and when you need to.
The Main Takeaways 📋
Likes are just the first step in measuring success and performance. But expanding your tracking scope and looking at multiple metrics will help you strategize. You don’t have to track all of your metrics. Find the ones that best represent the work you do and the content you make, and start keeping track of those. Analyze how your content performs and work in successful elements where you can. There’s no way to “hack” your metrics, but looking at more than likes will make growing your audience so much easier!