You’ve done it. You’ve set up your social media accounts and you’re ready to start posting, but then what? How will you know if what you’re doing is working? How will you know where you can improve?

There are a ton of social media metrics available, so many that it can be overwhelming. But have no fear. We’ve made a list of 8 essential social media metrics you should start with.

1. Reach

Reach is the number of people who see your content, and the more the better. Strong reach leads to strong brand awareness, and without strong brand awareness, it’s hard to reach any other goals you’ve set (engagement, subscribers, conversions, etc.).

You can measure your reach across all of your social media platforms. Look at follower growth, individual post reach, overall campaign reach, and your audience growth rate. You’ll know you’re doing something right if each campaign furthers your reach a little more.

2. Engagement

This is exactly what it sounds like: the number of people interacting with your social content, most often through liking, sharing, clicking, saving, and commenting on your posts. Your engagement rate will tell you which content your audience is connecting with the most, and you can adjust your social media strategy based on this data.

Any social platform where you can run ads will show the engagement rate of each one. Measure the rates of your ads to determine the average engagement rate for your brand, and then stop running under-performing ads and capitalize on the high-performing ones and make more ads that are similar.

3. Amplification Rate

Amplification is the number of people who see your content and share it with their network, or the ratio of shares per post. When your followers share your content, they expose it to new audiences without any effort on your part. Free publicity! A high amplification rate indicates that your followers have made a choice to be associated with your brand among their peers, becoming brand ambassadors.

Measure your amplification rate by taking the number of shared posts or re-posted and dividing it by your number of followers, then multiplying that number by 100.

4. Social Media Referrals

This metric refers to the number of visitors to your site who arrived through social media, such as clicking on a Facebook post which brought them to your website. By doing this, the user has left the platform you don’t own (social media) and landed on the platform you do, your website, where you have complete control of their experience with your brand. If people are committing the time to leave their social network to explore your website, it says a lot about their interest in your brand and should lead to conversions.

Social media referrals are easily tracked with Google Analytics. Simply visit Acquisition –> Social to see which networks are driving traffic to your website and how much. It also helps to use UTMs on your social links so you can differentiate the organic referrals and paid referrals.

Related: The Business Behind Social Media

5. Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

Your CTR is a measure of how many people who see your content actually click on it, usually to be directed to your website where they’ll find additional relevant content and the opportunity to complete a conversion. High CTRs indicate high interest and you can see which ads are working the best. CTR is also important because it effects your ad costs, as social platforms favour ads with high CTRs by granting better ad placement, more impressions, and lower costs per click.

Click-through-rate is the ratio of the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions, multiplied by 100. Don’t worry though; you won’t have to do the math. The major social media platforms automatically calculate the CTR for each of your ads.

6. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the number of people who arrive at your website and then immediately leave, or bounce. You want this metric to be low, as this indicates that your site is offering value to your audience so they’re sticking around. A high bounce rate indicates the opposite. You can also compare the bounce rate of different traffic sources and adjust your social media strategies based on that information.

You can measure bounce rate easily with Google Analytics. Go to Acquisition à All Traffic, then segment by Channels. Click on the column labelled Bounce Rate to sort the channels from lowest to highest bounce rate.

7. Conversions and Conversion Rate

Only you can decide what qualifies as a “conversion” to your business. It could mean a direct website purchase, a new subscriber to your newsletter, a download of gated content, etc. Whatever your definition is, conversions are the business goals you’re trying to achieve and your conversion rate is the measure of how many people who click on your ad go on to complete a conversion.

You can measure conversions by placing Facebook Pixels and Twitter website tags on the web pages you want to track (e.g. an order confirmation page) and the social network will track how many visits to those specific pages came from your ads.

8. Cost per Conversion

Your cost per conversion is the cost of securing a conversion after you figure in the costs of individual clicks (not all clicks will lead to conversions). For instance, if you’re paying 10 cents for each ad click, but it takes 100 ad clicks before you get a conversion, your cost per conversion will be $10. Your cost per conversion directly indicates your return on investment (ROI); if the product you’re trying to sell costs less than your cost per conversion, your ROI is negative. You want to keep your cost per conversion low to make money from your social ads.

Lucky for you, you don’t have to do any math to measure this metric. Social media ad platforms will calculate your cost per conversion for you.

If tracking these 8 social media metrics feels overwhelming, Eden Advertising can help. Contact us to take care of all aspects of your social campaigns, from creation, to monitoring, to analytics, always working to create better content and receive better results.