Social media KPIs are indicators used to guide your social media marketing strategy and determine whether that strategy is working.
Social media KPIs are your key performance indicators on social media, and include a clear set of goals that allow you to measure your level of success.
Why is it so important to track KPIs on social media?
Social media is evolving rapidly, and platforms now offer astronomical amounts of data… so much so that users sometimes have difficulty navigating it all and knowing exactly where they stand in terms of results.
Tracking KPIs keeps you focused on your company's true goals. Rather than looking at the colombia phone number data numbers alone, you're interested in their impact on the direction your business is taking.
Tracking KPIs allows you to know how well you are progressing towards achieving your goals and whether strategic changes are needed.
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How to define relevant KPIs for social media?
Identify your business goals
Your social media KPIs should always be linked to an overall strategic objective, so you need to clearly identify your primary objective .
For example, is the goal of your social media campaigns to increase brand awareness? Increase website traffic? Boost conversions and sales?
Once you've defined your strategic direction, you can break it down into individual objectives and associated social media KPIs. For example, if your ultimate goal is to increase traffic to your website, one of your KPIs might be the number of clicks from social media to your website.
But to link your KPIs to realistic goals, you'll first need to:
Track your competitors and industry benchmarks
What are the results obtained by accounts similar to yours?
With Hootsuite's social media benchmarking, you can determine how others in your industry are performing on social media and compare your results for social media metrics such as:
Profile impressions
Profile Scope
Followers
Audience growth rate
Engagement rate
Number of video views
Frequency of publication
Clicks
Shares
Industry Benchmarking Dashboard in Hootsuite Analytics
You can be even more specific and compare your performance to specific competitors rather than your entire industry.
If you've never measured social media KPIs before, make sure you collect your own benchmark data as well , so you can establish a baseline and know where you're starting from.
Set SMART goals
Comparing your current performance to your industry's performance as a whole gives you a good framework for setting realistic KPI goals. Just like your overall business goals , your social media KPIs should follow the 5 SMART criteria:
Specific: Set a specific goal. For example, is your goal to gain 500 Instagram followers in the next month? Or to increase your click-through rate by 20% by the end of the year?
Measurable: KPIs are indicators that allow you to track and quantify your progress. You should always be able to determine the path you need to take to achieve your goal.
Achievable: No need to aim for the moon. Choose achievable KPIs based on the overall industry and your own resources.
Realistic: Ensure that each social media KPI is linked to broader business objectives.
Time-bound: By when will this goal be achieved? When will you measure the results? In one month? Six months? One year?