Introduction

Social media marketing has been around for a long time, though it has rapidly changed over the last couple of years, it is here to stay. Given how long social media marketing has been at our disposal, you’d think that people have learned how to do it, report on it and use those reported insights to better your ongoing strategy… But they haven’t. Top marketing agencies that offer social media marketing understand the importance of the chosen KPIs and so should you!

What is a KPI?

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator and it essentially tells you or your team what signifies success or failure on a given project.

When talking about social media marketing, a KPI would be a reportable metric (Impressions, likes, followers, sales, traffic, etc.). Your job is to pick metrics—read KPIs—that you want to focus on and improve. For example, if you know that you want to use social media marketing to grow your follower count and upon monthly reporting, you can see that you’ve lost followers when compared to last month, then that is a failing KPI and will require your attention and a new strategy to fix.

What KPIs Should You Choose?

The KPIs that you choose wholly depend on which areas you would like to succeed in. However, I will give you an overview of which KPIs to focus on based on an objective (please feel free to customise these target KPIs based on your own individual needs).

Brand Awareness KPIs

If your goal is to grow the reach and awareness of your business then you’ve got an aim of brand awareness. This means you (for the time being) aren’t interested in generating traffic to your site and getting conversions, and you simply want to get more followers and ensure more people are seeing your posts and engaging with them.

Follower Count

The first KPI to focus on is the follower count. By growing your number of followers, you guarantee that more people are seeing your posts. A useful social media marketing tactic might be to do a giveaway to those that follow your account. Report on this metric as often as you like (we suggest month on month) and note any changes. It is worth considering that social media marketing agencies will generate interactive reports for you based on your chosen KPIs.

Reach

Unlike impressions, reach shows the number of unique people that have seen your posts. Use this metric (KPI) to get an idea of whether or not your posts are being seen by more people or less people. Use social media marketing insights to fuel your strategy decisions: do videos get more reach or do photos? Does content with people get more reach than that with products? Use these social media marketing insights to your advantage and reach our KPIs.

Likes

The number of likes you’re getting on each post (or total likes in a month) is a great indicator of how people are engaging with your posts; It’s not enough to just increase your reach. You must ensure that people are engaging with your content too. Look at how many ikes you’ve been getting over the last few months to set a target for growth. If you’ve been getting 1000 likes a month, then aim for an ambitious yet achievable target of 1200 likes next month (that is a 20% increase!) this can certainly be achieved with a data-driven social media marketing strategy. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, choosing proper KPIs is incredibly important to any social media marketing strategy. If after reading you’re still struggling to choose KPIs, consider reaching out to a marketing agency that offers social media marketing for help and advice.