Leveraging metrics, especially when you leverage social media, is one of the best ways of growing your business and increasing sales. It can also be extremely beneficial for optimizing your social profiles, because the more accurate information you include there, the easier it will be for fans and followers to contact you. When the most useful metrics are analyzed and used, there will be some tremendous opportunities for advertising available to you on social media that can be used to best advantage.
Since Facebook is still the biggest and most popular social media platform, we’ll focus some attention on leveraging metrics in Facebook and similar platforms, so you can reap the benefits of metric usage to enhance your business. Below, we discuss some of the most important metrics available in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you do make effective use of them, you should see noticeable business growth in the very near future.
Facebook Impressions
Impressions are equivalent to the number of instances in which your social media post is seen by targeted consumers. Facebook uses impressions to count the number of times one consumer views your post. Whereas the ‘reach’ analytic would show just one time if a consumer saw the post on three different occasions, the impression count would be three. In order to view the impression count, you just need to navigate to the Posts tab, and then choose Impressions: Organic/Paid from the menu which appears there. This metric will help you to understand how frequently your ad was displayed to consumers. Another useful metric you might use is to divide your impressions by the reach, to get the frequency metric which represents the number of times a person saw your ad.
Facebook Reach
Reach is an analytic which represents the number of individuals who actually saw your post. Recently, Facebook changed its algorithm to make it a bit more difficult to have messages displayed. Even if you happen to have a large number of Facebook followers, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your posts will be visible to all of them. In order to access reach information in Facebook, select the Overview tab from Facebook Insights, and you’ll see all the details under the Reach tab. This can be very useful when you want to know the number of individuals who actually viewed your content.
Facebook Engagement
Engagement is a metric that quantifies the number of times consumers perform some type of action after seeing your post. The measurable actions consist of comments, likes, shares, and reactions. This metric can be extremely useful for gauging the level of interest that your target audience has in your posted content. When you’re aware of the type of post that engages people the most fully, that will help guide your content strategy. When you can achieve better engagement with your target audience, your post will appear in a lot more of the news feeds owned by your followers.
Facebook Likes and Followers
A couple other important metrics in Facebook are the number of followers and the number of likes gleaned from your target audience. Likes are defined as users who have identified themselves as fans of your page. Followers on the other hand, have shown some kind of desire to have your posts appear in their news feeds, although sometimes the Facebook algorithm hinders this. In any case, when you know your audience size, you can be sure you aren’t losing more fans than you are picking up.
Twitter Engagements
On the Twitter platform, engagement is considered to be any action taken by a user regarding your Tweet, and it can be in the form of a like, a re-tweet, a comment, or a link. This metric provides an indication of whether or not your tweet inspired someone to learn more about your company or to share it with friends and associates. The Twitter engagement metric will be located under the Tweet tab, so it’s easy to find. The more engagement you have with followers, the better indication it is that people are interested in interacting with posted content of yours.
Twitter Top Followers
On the Twitter platform, the top follower is considered to be the individual who has the most followers of his own, and who has been following you for at least some part of the past month. Your top followers will be those individuals who have maximum potential for distributing your tweets to a number of other individuals, either by retweeting or liking them.
Twitter New Followers
New followers in Twitter are considered to be the count of individuals who have opted to follow your Twitter account during the current month. When a user chooses to become a follower, that indicates a stronger connection to a particular brand than likes or retweets. This can be an extremely useful metric in gauging the overall performance of your brand with regard to increasing your audience size.
Twitter Impressions
This metric consists of the number of times any tweet is displayed, as a result of a like, a search conducted by the user, or on your followers’ timelines. You can find the impression data by selecting View Tweet Activity under the Twitter Analytics tab. This information will help illustrate how effectively your content has been rolled out to audiences that are not included on your list of followers.
Twitter Top Tweet
The Top Tweet for the current month is always displayed on the home page in Twitter Analytics. That identifies a particular tweet as the one which has earned the most impressions, and has been considered the Top Media tweet for the month. It’s very important to know what resonates with your audience, whether that be a particular type of content, a specific day or time of the tweet, the kind of hashtag that was used, or some combination of all these factors.
Instagram Impressions
The number of impressions in Instagram is arrived at by counting the number of times your content is displayed to your target audience. Instagram Analytics will show this in more detail by displaying impressions that were sourced from home, profile, or hashtags. When you make good use of hashtags, it will definitely increase the number of posted impressions you’re able to garner.
Instagram Explore
The Explore feature in Instagram permits users to find all kinds of new and relevant posts from accounts they are not presently following. Instagram’s algorithm curates content based on accounts that are similar, or content that users interacted with. This can include video content, photos and images, or Reels and Stories. Instagram Insights will display a count of users that were reached using this feature, even if they are not currently following you.
Instagram Content Interactions
This metric counts the number of actions and the type of actions taken by users when engaging in some way with your content. That can include saves, shares, replies, comments, and likes. Taken cumulatively, this number represents the total count of user actions taken as a direct result of viewing your posted content.
Instagram Reach
This is a very important metric for gauging campaign performance on Instagram. It refers to the number of consumers or unique accounts which actually viewed some of your posted content. Obviously, the higher the reach count, the more individuals you are connecting with, all of whom have the potential to become future customers.
