Key metrics to measure the performance of your profiles on social networks and know your audience

Improving the performance of your profiles on social networks depends largely on the information you manage to obtain, regarding the impact of your content on your audience.

In order to carry out a correct analysis of the performance of your channels, Facebook offers you more than 150 metrics and the other platforms have a similar number of variables. However, among so much information it is difficult to know what to pay attention to, that is why I recommend that you start by looking for the data relevant to the objective for which you carried out a certain action.

For example, if you are trying to grow your audience, you should measure your followers and Likes. If you are looking for visualizations in your videos to improve your conversions, you should look at the time that users spend looking at these pieces.

In the same way, there are some metrics that are essential for the correct monitoring of your social channels. These variables will give you a better understanding of how successful your strategy is.

1. Number of followers (subscribers and Likes)

A very important indicator to know at what rate your audience is growing is through the number of followers. This means that every time a person follows you, it is because they surely want to know more about your content. However, the number of people who follow your account is not by itself an indicator that shows how big your audience is.

Some platforms have different metrics to evaluate the size of your audience, as Facebook does when offering information about Likes. This indicator, in addition to expressing a user's desire to follow your content, shows how much users support your brand.

Both the followers and the Likes are data that you can find directly in your profiles. If you want to see the balance over time, you must enter the Analitics section of the social network in question, to obtain a results report.

2. Scope

Another important metric to help you understand your audience size is reach, which is closely tied to the concept of impressions and views.

This dimension lets you know how many accounts or users were impacted by your post, as well as views and impressions show how many times the posts were shown. It is for this reason that the impressions are always going to be greater than the reach.

Just as the number of subscribers or followers shows how many people want to be in contact with your brand, this being your most loyal audience, the reach represents your potential audience, that is, the people who might be interested in your brand.

Since most social media algorithms work in such a way that users see the content more akin to their tastes, it is unlikely that your brand will be shown to users who are not interested in your communications.

Reach and impressions are mainly presented in two ways: You can see the total reach of your content for a given period and the reach of each post. This can vary depending on the platform, but the most important ones like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn allow you to check statistics of individual publications as well as the page in general.

3. Degree of loyalty of your audience or engagement

Engagement, as it is usually called in English, the degree of commitment or loyalty that a user has with a brand, is represented by certain metrics, among which are reactions (Likes), comments and shares. These indicators represent different degrees of approval of your audience regarding your brand.

Reactions show how much people agree or disagree with a post, comments indicate a desire to start a conversation and share a post show that your post was good enough that users want others to see it too.

Another metric that you can see when reviewing your statistics is clicks, which as the name implies, shows the number of clicks that people made on a link that you shared. This metric is very relevant to traffic goals.

Measure and know your audience

As we have seen so far, measuring specific information from social profiles is a very important part. The other big part of social media analytics is analyzing listening data on social channels.

Just as the analysis of the number of followers, the engagement and the reach speak of your strategy in social networks, the listening information of your social channels is what you should use to better understand your target audience.

To obtain this information it is necessary that you have a tool that allows you to listen to what users say, which makes the process of obtaining data more complex.

Depending on the type of listening tool you hire, you will get very valuable information on the demographics and behaviors of your users. For this reason, I present you some of the variables that can help you to know your audiences better.

1. Number of mentions and scope

Listening on social channels is the process of collecting information about the mentions that users make about your keywords. These terms may be different for each company. Some can monitor what is being said about their brand, their products, their campaigns or their industry among other topics.

The first metric to consider is the number of mentions. This dimension is quite simple as it tells you the number of times your keyword was mentioned during a given period of time. Depending on what you are measuring, this metric can show you the recognition of your brand, its popularity or that of certain products, as well as the needs of your audience.

Another metric that is vital to assess user loyalty with your brand is reach. Listening to digital media shows how many people saw your brand on social networks. The higher the number of mentions, the greater the reach.

2. Demographic data

The listening tools are also capable of telling you in which regions the people who mention those keywords of your interest are located. For example, you can know how well known a brand is in Australian men, or if in Texas it is better known by the Latino population. This information can give you great advantages when communicating with your audience.

Most listening tools can analyze the emotion with which users make a mention and show you a general report of that sentiment towards your brand, product, etc. In the same way, you can see how the feelings of your audience change instantly in the moment of a crisis.

This type of information helps you understand when something is happening that has a negative impact on your brand and therefore act accordingly to solve it.

When we talked about reach, I mentioned that some popular accounts have more weight when it comes to improving the brand recognition of your users. That is why it is also important to keep track of these accounts.

Most listening tools can recognize highly influential accounts that are talking about certain keywords. In fact, estimates can be made of the influence capacity of said account and even project results.

Conclution

While it is true that there are a large number of variables to take into account when promoting your brand or business, it is important that you first be clear about your objective and thus you can correctly measure the result of your action.

In the same way, being clear about the main metrics of the digital world will allow you to approach your social media reports in a more friendly way before moving on to more detailed reports.

Finally, it is a fact that listening to your audience is one of the key factors to generate successful products and companies. I recommend that you try the listening tool of your choice and if you even think that no one is talking about your particular brand, you can get very valuable information from your industry, which will allow you to be one step ahead in your segment.

Tell me which are the metrics that you use the most in your measurements and if you are still not obtaining information from your networks or your audience, I recommend that you take the leap of faith and start as soon as possible.