Do you want to know more about KPIs for social media? Well, keep reading to find out more and get KPI examples for social media.

Starting off with the definition of a KPI. A KPI, or key performance indicator, is a type of measurement metric that can be used to measure a variety of variables.

KPIs are a great way to measure the performance of a variable, for instance the number of blog posts published this month or the number of web visitors a month.

For social media KPIs, the concept is the same except the variable that is measured is to do with social media. This can cover a variety of aspects but we will get into some specific examples of KPIs for social media later in this post.

Why should you use KPIs?

Using KPIs has its benefits and can significantly improve your business’s processes and strategies.

A good way to measure

By using social media KPIs, businesses can fully understand the performance of their campaigns or strategy.

For example, if the social media KPI is lower than expected, the campaign or strategy can be changed accordingly to meet the expected social media KPI.

Social media KPIs offer an easy, tangible way to measure a variable that otherwise may be hard to quantify.

Better decisions

When it comes to making business decisions, social media KPIs can come in handy and offer some background information and context of the issue at hand.

Having this foundation leads to a quicker and more informed decision that has been backed up by reliable data. 

Which KPIs measure engagement?

Engagement social media KPIs are possibly the most important KPIs for social media. Engagement has the potential to dramatically improve your social media campaign and overall performance.

An engagement social media KPI is basically the number of shares, likes and comments that your posts receive.

Even if you have a small audience, as long as the audience is engaged, you will organically grow more leads.

Engagement has such a large potential for reaching a bigger audience and by using social media KPIs you can reach your full potential.

Click through rate

Measuring your click through rate shows the number of people that saw your post and actually clicked on it.

If you have a large click through rate but a low like/comment/share rate, then perhaps the content caught the user’s eye, but the quality wasn’t there for them to engage.

If it is the other way around, and you have a large amount of engagement in the form of likes/shares/comments but a low amount of clicks, then maybe you should A/B test your Facebook Ads with different visuals or imagery.

Try to test out different visuals to see which gets the most interaction and entices your audience. 

Likes

Likes is probably an obvious social media KPI but it is a super useful metric to measure. Likes generate more attention on social media platforms and work in your favour when it comes to the algorithms. More likes gives your brand or business more opportunity to reach more people.

Shares

Shares are certainly one of the more valuable social media KPIs. Likes can sometimes be passive and mindless whereas it reflects your work when a user shares your post.

Sharing shows that a user has made a conscious decision to either inform their network or recommend you to their network.

This also generates more reach but also indicates that your content is of high quality and speaks well to your audience, increasing engagement.

Which KPIs measure reach?

Measuring the reach of your campaign is useful if you want to know how far your message is travelling.

According to HubSpot, many professionals state that increased exposure is the main advantage of using social media platforms for marketing purposes, making reach a very important goal in any business’s online strategy.

Followers

The number of users that follow your business on social media platforms can give you an idea about your reach.

This number is the total amount of users that have agreed to see your content. However, this does not mean that this amount of people will actually see your posts on their newsfeed/timeline.

With social media, the number of people following you does not accurately reflect the amount of reach. 

Especially with the everchanging algorithms on social media, users can follow a business but not see their posts on their newsfeed/timeline which can be misleading at times.

Impressions

Much like followers, impressions are a little vague. Impressions tell you how many times your content appeared in a user’s timeline or newsfeed because they follow you or because someone they know has shared or liked your post.

This does not mean that a user has actually looked at your content but it means that they had the opportunity to.

Traffic

Measuring your web traffic gained from social media is a very important social media KPI to measure.

You want to ensure that all the time, money and resources you invested in your social media strategy or campaign is working and that you are gaining a return on your investment.

Which KPIs measure conversions?

Measuring the number of conversions is what completes your online marketing strategy. This social media KPI tells you how many of your fans are actually willing to give you something in return.

Conversions show you if all your efforts and time is actually paying off and resulting in cold hard sales.

Social media conversion rate

This rate shows the number of conversions that originated from social media. This social media KPI is great for showing how effective each of your posts are performing.

This shows you directly how many people are actively converting to sales from social media platforms. A staple social media KPI that is very useful.

If your social media conversion KPI is low, then consider altering your call to action or changing the layout of your posts to make them more enticing and inviting.

Which KPIs measure customer loyalty?

There are many aspects to measuring customer loyalty, but let’s focus on the qualitive side of things and measure customers’ loyalty in terms of brand perception and behaviour.

Let’s suppose a business want to quantify their positive reviews on their website or the percentage of positive reviews from loyal customers.

Online survey or quick questionnaires on social media can easily measure a customer’s brand perception when it comes to loyalty.

This is an easy way to quantify this variable and you can easily create a social media KPI of the results to make the results more accessible and easier to understand.

KPI examples for social media

Setting KPIs for social media have different purposes and aims. Check out the list below and start measuring your most valuable assets.

Engagement KPI

Want to know your average engagement rate as a percentage? Find the easy formula below:

This KPI shows you the average rate of engagement for your online social media platforms. This is an easy way to monitor engagement and to analyse what posts work well and which posts do not.

Reach KPI

Make sure to measure your reach on social media as this holds a lot of potential for you to gain new followers and fans.

This KPI tells you how many people have seen your post since it went live. This is a good KPI to experiment with, as time and day can affect the performance of your posts.

Conversions KPI

Here’s how to calculate your click through rate (CTR) percentage:

This social media KPI will tell you how many people are actually showing interest in what you post and your content.

Customer loyalty KPI

If you were to create an online survey or a simple questionnaire, you can easily gather the results and turn them into a KPI.

Say you create a customer survey that asks them to rate your product on a scale of 1 to 10. You simply add the answers together and divide by the number of respondents and then multiply by 10.

This gives you your result as a KPI and can be easily compared with your other goals or objectives.

Are you looking for an all-in-one reporting platform? Try out Agency360’s 14-day trial here and let the software do all the hard work for you.