Wow, your last Facebook post had over 400 impressions! But what does that mean to you? Metrics are arguably the most important part of your social media reports. Providing statistics that you can’t argue, showing the real impact your social strategy is having on other areas of your business, such as sales or increased traffic to your website. With analytic terms like Reach, Impressions, KPI, and Engagement being used to measure your marketing efforts, it is important to fully understand what they mean and why they matter.

KPI’s – Your Key Performance Indicators are critical indicators of progress towards your business’s goals. Are you looking to drive sales? Increase brand awareness? Making sure your KPI goals are S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely) is key for a successful social marketing strategy. 

IMPRESSIONS – If the main goal of your social strategy is to increase brand awareness, pay close attention to your impressions. Impressions are the amount of people who have viewed your post on their newsfeed. 

REACH – Many people confuse impressions and reach. Reach is the total number of unique views your post receives. A unique view happens when a post is viewed multiple times on someone’s newsfeed, whereas an impression is singular. If you notice your reach is 1,000, but your impressions are 1,500, the majority of the viewers only saw your post once. This can be increased by asking followers to “share” your posts.

ENGAGEMENT – Engagement is the “social” side of social media – giving you a clear insight into how and if your audience is interested and interacting with your content. This will tell you how many likes, comments, and shares your social media posts get and can be beneficial when creating future marketing campaigns and posts. Having a huge number of followers isn’t helpful if they don’t connect to your brand, interact with your content, and more importantly, buy your products or services.

Now that you know the terms,  analyzing the metrics of your social media marketing efforts will help you tweak your campaigns and create more meaningful relationships with your target audience as well as help you reach your social media goals.

Still unsure of your social standing, or want to enhance your efforts with one of our specialists? Contact us today to see if you qualify for a free audit!