Social media is something businesses of all sizes should use. Social channels make it possible to reach people who are interested in the products and services you offer. As well as reaching them, the ongoing nature of social media means you can build the level of trust needed for someone to buy from your business.

As a social media consultant, We help businesses with all kinds of issues related to social media. Since this gives me the opportunity to see how different businesses are approaching their social endeavors, I can look at trends across different industries and organizational sizes. One of the problems I commonly see is businesses struggling to gauge how well their social media efforts are performing.

While it wasn’t that long ago when getting concrete data from social media platforms was quite difficult to do, the good news is that it’s not the case anymore. The platform understands the value data can provide to businesses and is happy to provide it. However, just because the data is available doesn’t mean measuring social media marketing performance is straightforward.

Not only is there the problem of needing to measure results across multiple platforms, but there’s also the problem of trying to figure out which metrics are even meaningful. Without having a clear way of measuring results, most businesses will struggle to find traction with their social media management. That’s why we want to discuss why and how three social metrics are worth measuring:

Like and / or Share

While social media can bring customers to your business, it’s important to remember that these channels generally sit at the top of the marketing funnel. That means most people will want to be involved with your brand for a while before actually buying. You can measure that engagement through likes and / or shares. When these metrics are used as internal benchmarks, they go beyond vanity metrics and provide insight into what type of content is best suited to your audience.

Click

Once someone is familiar with your business, you’ll want to get them on social media and onto your website. Clicks are the ideal metric for measuring this goal. You can see general trends in how many people click through to your site each day, along with which specific efforts are the best at driving clicks.

Average Time on Site

It’s important to remember that not all clicks are the same. That’s why you should also measure how much time people spend on your site after clicking. If you suddenly notice that a much smaller group of social media visitors are staying on your site than usual, it may mean that you are pitching something on social that isn’t really in line with the experience visitors were having when they arrived at your site.