Examples of 31 KPIs for Social Media Strategy Scorecard

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.

An example of social media strategy map

Learn more about Social Media Strategy Map >

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.)

Social media metrics in BSC Designer

The hierarchy of the social media goals and performance indicators. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

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

An example of social media strategy map

An example of the strategy map for social media with specific goals, KPIs, and initiatives. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media 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.

Achieve valuable business results goal

An example of the goal with leading and lagging indicators. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

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
Personal brand interaction
Personal brand interaction goal quantified by leading and lagging metrics. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

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
Engaging content goal
An example of how the 'Engagement content' goal can be quantified with performance indicators. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

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
Communicate with social media users goal
How to measure the efforts and outcomes of the communication goal. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

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
Post engaging content goal
The quantified definition of what engaging content is. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

Goal: Access wider auditory via paid ads

Lagging metrics
  • Cost per lead
  • LTV (customer lifetime value)
Leading metrics
  • Social media budget
Access wider auditory via paid ads goal
An example of how to quantify the 'paid ads' goal. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

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.

Train Team to Interact on Social Media
The training goal quantified with a lagging indicator. Two initiatives aligned to explain the relevant action plan. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

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
Learn social media tactics that work for us
The learning goal with its strategic initiatives. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

Goal: Understand customer profile

  • Find the topics of interest
  • Test a format that works the best
  • Profile followers by age, gender, geography, language spoken
Understand customer profile goal
Understanding customer profile will require focusing on these three initiatives. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

Social media dashboard example

An example of a dashboard for social media activities. Source: View Social Media KPIs online in BSC Designer Social Media KPIs.

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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?

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More About Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning Process:
BSC Designer software will support your team on all steps of strategic planning.
Examples of the Balanced Scorecard:
Examples of the Balanced Scorecard with KPIs
Strategy Maps:
8 Steps to Create a Strategy Map By BSC Designer
Cite as: Alexis Savkín, "Examples of 31 KPIs for Social Media Strategy Scorecard," BSC Designer, February 27, 2019, https://bscdesigner.com/social-media-metrics.htm.

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