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Social media marketing has come a long way in recent years. While some social media metrics and strategies have waned in relevance, others have emerged as vital indicators of success in the constantly shifting digital landscape. This comprehensive guide dives into every essential social media metric to help you track your efforts effectively in 2024.
Want to know the most important marketing KPIs to track across all functions (i.e. content, SEO, email, social, etc.)? Check out the definitive list of marketing KPIs all marketers should be tracking according to 400+ marketing professionals.
Social media is more competitive than ever. With declining organic reach, rapid content consumption, and rising expectations for personalized experiences, it’s critical to ensure your efforts deliver tangible returns. Measuring social media metrics provides clarity on what works and what doesn’t in a competitive landscape. Recent studies reinforce this need this highlights the importance of focusing on platform-specific social media metrics to gauge performance.
Understanding your audience’s preferences starts with analyzing social media metrics like likes, shares, and comments. Engagement remains a cornerstone of social media success. It reflects how well your content resonates with your audience, from likes and comments to shares and saves.
What Does Engagement Entail?“Engagement pertains to likes, comments, shares, views, etc.,” says Raj Vardhman of 99 Firms.
Sally Willis of Isoline Communications agrees: “The ideal engagement metric works on a scoring system and includes criteria such as audience reach, shares, and comments to provide a complete picture of how the message was received and what the response was.”
“Knowing how many engagements your followers actually execute on average is much more valuable than knowing how many followers or likes that you have separately,” says Quincy Smith of Ampjar.
Engagement is a multifaceted metric that varies across social media platforms, depending on their features and audience behavior. Each platform provides unique tools to track social media metrics that reveal engagement trends. Below, we outline where and how you can track engagement across major platforms:
Facebook Insights offers a robust way to track social media metrics like post engagement and reach.:
Pro Tip: Use the “Engagement Rate per Reach” metric in Ads Manager for paid campaigns. It combines reach and engagement to gauge ad effectiveness.
Instagram’s native analytics (accessible via Professional Accounts) focuses on both post and story performance:
Pro Tip: Saves and shares are weighted heavily by Instagram’s algorithm, making them critical to track.
TikTok Pro Accounts provide robust analytics, especially for short-form video creators:
Pro Tip: High shares and saves on TikTok often correlate with virality.
LinkedIn’s analytics tools cater to B2B marketers, with key social media metrics such as:
Pro Tip: Personal stories and polls often generate higher engagement than promotional posts.
Twitter Analytics tracks real-time engagement with tweets:
Pro Tip: Monitor quote tweets separately—they often carry more contextual engagement than simple retweets.
YouTube Studio offers comprehensive engagement data for video creators:
Pro Tip: Focus on increasing “watch time” and “audience retention,” as they heavily influence video rankings.
Pinterest Analytics provides insights into pin performance:
Pro Tip: Rich pins (e.g., product pins) often drive higher engagement compared to standard pins.
New platforms like Threads and BeReal are shaping engagement metrics differently:
Pro Tip: On emerging platforms, prioritize community building over quantitative engagement metrics during the early adoption phase.
By leveraging platform-specific tools and analyzing engagement comprehensively, you can refine your social media strategy, align content with audience preferences, and optimize your performance across channels.
Beyond engagement metrics, platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn offer demographic breakdowns in their analytics. These insights help you identify which age groups, genders, or locations interact most with your content, enabling targeted adjustments to your strategy.
Our respondents also note that you should measure engagement on every social channel you use.
“You can track engagement on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest—any channel where people can like or comment on your posts,” says Christina Albe of Haus von Albe.
“Monitoring your post engagement across all networks is extremely important,” says Yvonne Hall of HIVE Digital Strategy. “By knowing which posts have the highest engagement, you can refine your social media strategy to more effectively engage your followers and grow your follower base organically.”
“Tracking your social media engagements will give you the data needed to make informed decisions,” says Market Veep’s Emily Boisvert. “You can look into what social platform is getting the most engagement—as well as what type of content is driving that engagement—to inform your content strategy moving forward.”“If you’re not able to engage your audience on your social media channels, it’s time to restrategize your campaigns,” Techtic Solutions’ Rajat Chauhan says.
Accessing engagement metrics on social media platforms is straightforward but varies across different networks. Here’s a guide to help you navigate the process on four key platforms often used in B2B marketing: LinkedIn, Facebook, X (Twitter), and Instagram.
To view analytics for your LinkedIn company page, log in and go to the admin center. Click on the Analytics tab in the menu, where you can choose options like Updates, Followers, or Visitors for detailed metrics. To check performance for individual posts, click Show Stats in the bottom-right corner of the post. Only admins or those with “analyst” access can view this data.
For personal profiles, log in and navigate to your profile page. Scroll down to the section labeled Analytics and click Show All Analytics. Here, you can view metrics like post impressions, profile views, followers, and search appearances. These insights are visible only to the profile owner.
On Facebook, engagement metrics are found under the Insights tab, accessible from the top menu of your page. Keep in mind that insights are only available for activity within the last two years. Demographic data, such as audience age or location, will appear only when there’s enough data—typically after reaching over 100 engaged users.
To check engagement metrics for X (formerly Twitter), log into your account and visit the Tweet Activity Dashboard. This tool provides real-time engagement data, allowing you to see how users interact with your tweets. For deeper insights, click on individual tweets to view a detailed breakdown of metrics like likes, retweets, and replies.
On Instagram, engagement metrics are available exclusively through the mobile app for business profiles. Tap the menu icon in the upper-right corner of your profile and select Insights. If you’re using a personal account, you’ll need to switch to a business profile to unlock analytics. This section provides insights on post performance, audience demographics, and engagement trends.
Understanding where to locate these metrics ensures that you can consistently evaluate your social media performance and make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy.
To monitor the impact of your social media marketing efforts, you may have to log into multiple tools to check how your accounts on different social networks are performing and spend hours compiling a comprehensive report. But, with Databox, social media reporting doesn’t have to be a time-consuming chore anymore.
Now you can quickly assess your social media performance in a single dashboard that monitors fundamental metrics, such as:
Now you can benefit from the experience of our social media experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for measuring the impact of your social media marketing efforts from multiple channels. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Social Media accounts with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
Consistency tracks how regularly and predictably you post content on social media platforms. It is a vital metric to ensure your brand stays top of mind for your audience while maintaining algorithmic favor across platforms.
CTR shows how often users click on links in your posts, driving them to your website or landing pages.
CTR reveals how effective your content is at generating traffic and moving users into your sales funnel.
While click-through rate is one way to measure a post’s performance, Emily Chen of The Great Guac Off™ says she prefers to measure click-through volume instead. “We’re a B2B company, and I’ve found that social engagements like followers, likes, and comments don’t translate into sales and profit for us.”
“Instead, I focus on the click-through volume and aim for 100+ clicks with every share. I know if someone in our target market (HR and Office Managers) clicks through to our site, there is a roughly 13% likelihood they will request additional information, and about one in five of these will become paying clients,” Chen says.
Referral Rock’s Megan Mosley agrees: “Measuring clicks gives us a quick way to understand what our followers want more of. This then helps us work on the content that can increase our engagement and leads.”
Sessions by social source. See the total number of sessions each social media channel generates on a monthly basis.
Total number of Facebook page likes. See the total number of likes your Facebook page has acquired over time.
Number of followers. View the number of followers you have on any social media channel – LinkedIn, Twitter, and/or Instagram.
High CTR but low conversions? Evaluate landing page alignment with your post content.
Video is a dominant format in 2024, especially on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Tracking completion rates helps you understand how engaging your videos are.
Referral traffic measures how much of your website traffic originates from social media platforms.
Beyond numbers, sentiment analysis evaluates how users feel about your brand.
Use tools like Brandwatch or Sprout Social to analyze positive, negative, or neutral mentions.
A campaign receiving negative comments about outdated visuals may need immediate adjustments to recover engagement.
The relevance score measures how well your ads resonate with the target audience, offering valuable insight into their effectiveness. Scores range from 1 to 10, with higher scores indicating better alignment.Why It Matters:
Frequency tracks how often a single user views your ad within a specific period. While familiarity can breed recognition, excessive exposure risks ad fatigue, reducing effectiveness
Why It Matters:
Keeping frequency in check ensures your creative remains engaging and impactful.Pro Tip: Monitor frequency closely; if it exceeds 3-4 impressions per user, consider refreshing your ad creative or refining your audience.
By monitoring and optimizing these metrics, you can ensure your advertising strategy remains cost-efficient and effective in achieving business goals.
The role of influencers in amplifying brand visibility and generating measurable outcomes is a critical component of modern marketing. By analyzing how effectively an influencer engages their audience and inspires desired actions, such as gaining new followers, boosting engagement, or driving leads, brands can determine the tangible benefits of influencer partnerships.
A straightforward way to assess an influencer’s impact on your campaign is by calculating the percentage of total results they contributed. This can be determined using the formula:
(Engagements or Conversions Attributed to the Influencer ÷ Total Engagements or Conversions) × 100
If a brand receives 500 conversions through an influencer’s efforts out of a total of 2,000 conversions during a campaign, the calculation would reveal that the influencer accounted for 25% of the campaign’s results. This highlights their direct role in driving one-quarter of the overall success.
By using this metric, businesses can identify which influencers generate the best ROI and align their future collaborations with those who deliver the most value.
Interactions measure the level of engagement your audience has with your content beyond passive impressions. These social media metrics highlight how your audience actively engages through actions such as likes, comments, shares, and other platform-specific behaviors. Interactions are key indicators of how well your content resonates with your audience and sparks meaningful engagement.
By tracking and optimizing interactions, you can better understand what drives your audience to engage and build a stronger connection between your brand and its followers.
With stricter privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, iOS updates), focus on collecting and leveraging first-party data. Use tools like Meta Pixel for accurate audience insights.
Track influencer performance beyond follower counts:
Compare your brand’s mentions and visibility against competitors to gauge market position.
4. Demographics as First-Party Data
As privacy regulations limit third-party data tracking, collecting first-party demographic insights directly from social media platforms is critical. These insights can be used to create highly targeted campaigns while adhering to privacy standards.
Manually calculating social media metrics is no longer practical in today’s fast-paced digital environment. To remain flexible and efficient, leveraging the right analytics tools is essential.
These tools streamline the process of tracking and analyzing social media data, allowing you to focus on extracting valuable insights. Below are some top-notch options for monitoring social media metrics, along with a downloadable social media analytics template to simplify your reporting process.
Tracking social media metrics across platforms can be time-consuming. Simplify your reporting with tools like:
Save time with Databox’s free templates for engagement tracking, CTR analysis, and audience insights. Connect your accounts and populate your dashboard in minutes.
Each major social media platform offers built-in analytics tailored to its unique features and audience behaviors. While the specific metrics available may differ, these tools are all powerful resources for monitoring and optimizing your social media strategy. Here’s a quick overview of what each platform provides:
TikTok Analytics provides a streamlined way to assess your short-form video performance, audience growth, and engagement trends.
Key Features:
Twitter Analytics includes three key dashboards to help you understand your performance:
Pinterest Analytics combines individual Pin performance data with profile-level insights to evaluate your overall strategy.
Highlights:
LinkedIn Analytics offers a professional lens on social performance, focusing on engagement and network growth.
Key Insights:
Each of these tools offers unique features to help you better understand your audience and refine your social media strategy. By leveraging platform-specific insights, you can make data-driven decisions to maximize your impact.
Not all metrics matter equally. Prioritize metrics based on your goals:
Use metrics to identify:
The digital landscape evolves quickly. Continuously experiment and adapt based on the latest trends and data.
Measuring the right metrics is not just about proving ROI—it’s about uncovering opportunities, refining strategies, and staying ahead in a dynamic digital landscape. By focusing on actionable insights and adapting to platform changes, you can ensure sustained growth and engagement in 2024.
So which of these 24 metrics is the absolute most important to track? There really isn’t one.
As Adzerk’s Chris Shuptrine says: “You can’t only measure one social media metric to get a real sense of how your social media marketing effort is shaping up.”
Nada Pupovac of No Bounds Digital says the metrics to track depend on your goals. “If you want to promote an event, then it’s the number of event responses. If your goal is to generate leads, then you should track the number of conversions coming from a particular social media channel.”
Start by setting your goals for your efforts on social media. Then, select from the metrics above to set the KPIs you’ll track to see if your returns from social are worth the time and effort you’re putting into social media marketing.
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writes about marketing, business, and technology for B2B SaaS companies. A former writing instructor and corporate marketer, she uses her subject-matter expertise and desire to educate others as motivation for developing actionable, in-depth, user-focused content.
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