Any business wants to stand out in social media. Learn how to track the pulse of your social media marketing with KPIs and align performance indicators with your business strategy.
Social Media KPIs
Below, we will list the number of social media metrics in several categories:
- Engagement Metrics
- Internal metrics
- Popularity metrics
- Demographic metrics
- Incoming Traffic
- Conversions and financial metrics
- Paid posts metrics
- Traffic metrics
- Average “A” per “B” metric
In this way, you can get a general understanding of what can be measured.
If you want to learn how these metrics can be aligned with social media strategy, switch to the part of the article where we talk about the strategy scorecard.
Engagement Metrics
- Impressions – this post was seen by # of persons
- Profile visits – track the peaks of visits to your profiles after certain posts
- Likes – and similar interactions
- Followers and subscribers – the number of persons who followed your page
- Public comments – we can also track positive and negative comments
- Private questions – contacts via personal messages
- Shares – the number of reposts
Internal metrics
- Posts per period – how often do you post?
- Response time – how quickly do you respond to public and private comments?
- Complain resolve rate – the percentage of public complaints resolved
- Formal readability index – how good is your content? There are automatic tests
- Content quality index – your internal content quality rate (+1 for proofread content, +5 for illustrations, +2 for relevant links, +3 for a good layout, etc.)
Popularity metrics
- Brand mentions (more brand metrics)
- People tagged
- Hashtags used
Demographic metrics
- Followers by age and gender
- Geography
- Language spoken
- Activity days and hours
Incoming Traffic
- Direct traffic – what Google Analytics shows
- Indirect traffic – someone searched your brand in Google
Conversions and financial metrics
- % of social leads converted to sales
- Revenue generated by social leads
If you are not getting hundreds of sales daily, track the conversions in intermediate results:
- # of qualified interactions (followers, subscription to the newsletter, free trial download, etc.)
Paid posts metrics
- Cost per lead
- LTV (customer lifetime value)
Traffic metrics
- Time on site
- Adjusted bounce rate
Average “A” per “B” metric
Metrics built using a formula: “Average {metric a} per {metric b}”:
- Average clicks per post
- Average shares per article
- Average comment per post
Strategy Scorecard for Social Media with KPIs
A good metric is aligned with some goal.
Let’s use the Balanced Scorecard framework and its cause-and-effect logic to map an example of such goals. In the end, we will have a strategy map for social media marketing.
Use it as a template to start working on your own social media strategy.
Stakeholders’ Interests Perspective
In this perspective, we map the expected financial results or more broadly, the expectations of the stakeholders.
Goal: Achieve valuable business results
The focus of this goal is on converting social media activities into valuable business results. As discussed above, valuable business results are not always direct sales. For example, we can focus on:
- Subscriptions to the newsletter or
- New test accounts opened.
Lagging metrics
- # of qualified interaction (is defined in the Learning and Growth Perspective below)
- % of social leads converted to sales
- Revenue generated by social leads
Leading metrics
- Lagging part of the “Engaging content” goal from the Customer Perspective
- Lagging part of the “Personal brand interaction” goal from the Customer Perspective
To learn more about the flow of leading and lagging performance on the scorecard, I would recommend checking out the corresponding part of the Scorecard and KPIs 101 article.
Customer Perspective
Following the Balanced Scorecard logic, in the Customer perspective, we map what our customers need. Formulate goals from a customer’s point of view.
Goal: Personal brand interaction
Customers want to communicate with brands on a more personal level.
Lagging metrics
- Public comments
- Private questions
- Average comments per post
- Brand mentions
- People tagged
Leading metrics
- Lagging part of the “Communicate with social media users” goal from the Internal Perspective
Goal: Engaging content
Lagging metrics
- Impressions, Profile visits
- Likes, Followers, Subscribers
- Direct traffic
- Indirect traffic
Leading metrics
- Lagging part of the “Post engaging content” goal from the Internal Perspective
- Lagging part of the “Access wider auditory via the paid ads” goal from the Internal Perspective
- Average shares per article
Internal Processes Perspective
In the Internal perspective of the Balanced Scorecard, we focus on the ways to satisfy customer needs. In other words:
- How can we give our customers a feeling of interaction with the brand on a personal level?
- How can we deliver engaging content regularly?
In this way, we can formulate two goals for the Internal Perspective.
Goal: Communicate with social media users
Lagging metrics
- Response time
- Complaint resolution rate
Leading metrics
- Lagging part of the “Train Team to Interact on Social Media” goal from the Learning and Growth Perspective
Goal: Post engaging content
This study by MarketingSherpa gives us some idea about the expectations of clients from social media.A good content strategy for social media can combine these topics:
- Product information
- Promotions
- Useful content
- Entertaining content
- Lifestyle content
Lagging metrics
- Posts per time period
- Time on site
- Bounce rate
Leading metrics
- Formal readability index
- Content quality index
- Lagging part of the “Learn social media tactics that work for us” goal from the Learning and Growth Perspective
- Lagging part of the “Understand customer profile” goal from the Learning and Growth Perspective
Goal: Access wider auditory via paid ads
Lagging metrics
- Cost per lead
- LTV (customer lifetime value)
Leading metrics
- Social media budget
Learning and Growth Perspective
Finally, in the Learning and Growth perspective of the Balanced Scorecard framework, we can focus our learning efforts.
Goal: Train Team to Interact on Social Media
Your team will need to get trained to deal with social media:
- Define the idea of qualified interaction
- Deal with negative comments
A list of 10 best practices like this one will be a good starting point. Pay special attention to managing negative comments. Some good recommendations can be found here.
Define the concept of qualified interaction
In the Financial perspective, we have a metric “# of qualified interactions.”
Here, in the Learning and Growth perspective, you need to understand what the qualified lead is in your case.
This idea is similar to the “qualified lead” that we use on the Marketing scorecard.
For example, in BSC Designer, we believe that our potential users unlock the value of the product if they have created at least one scorecard. This is a qualified interaction in our case.In this way, we can compare the costs of qualified interaction for the leads from organic search traffic, organic social media traffic, paid ads and also do a comparison of the platforms.
In your case, a qualified interaction might be a subscription to the newsletter, or a test account sign up.
Goal: Learn social media tactics that work for us
This is an umbrella goal that might include various themes that help to understand what approaches work best for this organization. The additional themes might be:
- Understand which social media platforms work best
- Find the best time to post
Goal: Understand customer profile
- Find the topics of interest
- Test a format that works the best
- Profile followers by age, gender, geography, language spoken
Training session: 'Introduction to Balanced Scorecard by BSC Designer' is offered as part of our ongoing learning program and included with a BSC Designer subscription.
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What’s next?
The specific action plan depends on where you are on the social media maturity scale. Here are some common improvement thoughts:
1. Shift the Focus
Social media specialists tend to focus on “vanity” metrics; they justify their achievements by the number of followers, page likes, etc.
Shift the focus to the number of qualified interactions.
2. Do Audit
Do an audit of how your company is doing now in terms of social media marketing. What are your main challenges?
- The quality of the content?
- The format of the content?
- The way your team interacts online?
- The connection between your activities in social media and tangible outcomes?
This will focus your action plans and measurement efforts.
3. Response Plan
Outline the response plan. Your primary focus should be on the business goals that you want to achieve (a challenge + action plan), not on the metrics.
Use a strategy map example from this article as a starting point.
What's next?- Sign up for a free account at BSC Designer to access the scorecard templates, including 'Social Media KPIs' discussed in this article.
- Follow our Strategy Implementation System to align stakeholders, strategic ambitions, and business frameworks into a comprehensive strategy.
More About Strategic Planning
Alexis is a Senior Strategy Consultant and CEO at BSC Designer, with over 20 years of experience in strategic planning. Alexis developed the “5 Step Strategy Implementation System” that helps companies with the practical implementation of their strategies. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences and has published over 100 articles on strategy and performance management, including the book “10 Step KPI System”. His work is frequently cited in academic research.
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