The Skim on Social Media Analytics

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If you’ve spent a ton of time curating some super snarky, knee-slapping, punny social media content and are wondering why you aren’t getting any “likes,” you might be feeling like the gif on the left.

We might be able to shed a little insight! The reason behind your digital unpopularity boils down to the ever-changing, unbelievably complicated metric, social media platforms use to display content.

In order to understand each social media platform’s unique metric, you must first understand the three elements that comprise it – reach, impressions, and engagement. Measuring the success of your social strategy comes from these three elements. When trying to increase your visibility and influence on social media, it’s all about accurately measuring your metrics and finding areas to increase efforts.

Let’s break the three elements down. By definition, they simply mean:

Reach: the number of people who see your content.

Impressions: the number of times your content is displayed.

Engagement: the number of interactions people have with your content

Social Media Reach

Reach and impressions are similar and often confused. Reach shows how many unique accounts have seen your post and how much awareness and value you’re gaining. If your objective is to increase brand awareness and “reach” the highest number of users possible, you should be focusing on growing your reach. There are several factors that have a direct impact on a post’s reach. This particularly includes the use of hashtags, a call-to-action and certainly publishing when your audience is most engaged, for example.

Social Media Impressions

Digital impressions are the number of times an advertisement, Facebook post, tweet, or any piece of digital content is displayed to your audience. In most cases, you can choose to base your digital spending on impressions alone. The number of times your ad is viewed will be what your budget is based on. Your budget will be based on the number of views on your ad or post. This Cost Per Impression (CPI) will provide you with moment-to-moment updates. This element can help you gauge how users are responding to your ad.

Social Media Engagement

Engagement refers to the number of interactions people have with your content. This includes likes, comments, shares, retweets, or any other measurable interaction with your digital content. There are multiple factors that influence your engagement rate. The time of day a post is made, the frequency of posts, the number of followers, the content and the messaging all contribute.

With this in mind, how do we decide which metric is the most important now? There’s no straight answer. It all boils down to what your marketing goals are. Need help figuring that out? Contact a Maven today to help uncover your needs and develop the best plan for you.