The sheer volume of social media metrics available can be overwhelming, and relying on easy-to-reach data can lead you astray. The key to effective campaign analysis is balancing a mix of metrics, from the simple to the complex.
A comprehensive approach ensures the campaign stays on track. It also enables you to pivot when challenges arise and helps you fully seize opportunities when things are going well.
Influencer marketing offers enormous potential, with 63% of consumers reporting that influencers shape their purchasing decisions. But how can you be sure the influencers you’re working with are truly having an impact?
In truth, understanding which social metrics to track, when to track them, and why can be challenging. Metrics vary significantly across platforms; for instance, a view on YouTube is counted after 30 seconds, while on TikTok, it’s counted after just one.
To unlock the full potential of social media campaigns, marketers must pay close attention to the data, even before collaborating with an influencer. By analysing the influencer's effect on their audience and the broader market conversation, they can gain a realistic view of potential outcomes.
Relying solely on personal judgment can be misleading. After all, marketers’ preferences may not align with their target audience, and content that performs well on the surface may not have a lasting impact.
In short, data serves as a guide, helping you understand what worked, why, and how to replicate it. This is especially important when scaling campaigns. For example, if you know an influencer’s content directly brings in new customers thanks to tracking the conversion rate, you can explore why through deeper qualitative analysis.
Let’s start with the basics: reach, impressions, engagement, and click-through rate. These metrics give you insight into how many people viewed your content, how they interacted with it, and what actions they took as a result.
Let's dig into what these important metrics mean for your social media performance:
Reach is the total number of unique users who saw your content. It helps gauge how widely your content was distributed but doesn’t reveal how viewers felt about it or who they are.
Impressions count how many times your content was displayed, including multiple views by the same user. It gives a broader sense of exposure but, like reach, doesn't provide details on viewer sentiment.
62% of strategists, managers, and directors planned to increase their tracking of reach and impressions in 2023.
Engagement rates measure how your audience interacts with your content. It’s calculated by dividing the total number of engagements—likes, comments, shares, pins, and so on—by the number of impressions or reach, then multiplying it by 100.
This social media metric is highly valuable because it tells you how many people were inspired to act by your content. This is a good indicator of how many people resonated with it. It’s no wonder that 79% of marketers track these insightful metrics.
The click-through rate is the percentage of viewers who click tracked links in your posts. Calculate the CTR of a post by dividing the total number of clicks by the number of impressions. Then multiply the result by 100.
It’s essential to assess how effective your content is at driving web traffic. Once users are on your site, you can further track metrics like new visitors or time spent browsing.
Reach and impressions are helpful but don’t tell the whole story. They can only tell you how many people have seen your content but not how it has resonated.
In addition, other social media metrics like follower growth are often considered vanity metrics that are too superficial to provide real insights.
Similarly, likes may seem encouraging, but they don’t mean much alone. After all, people spend an average of 143 minutes per day on social media, and a like might just be a fleeting reaction.
While these metrics are visible and easy to track, they often create an illusion of success. To measure true social media effectiveness, brands should dig deeper into metrics that indicate genuine impact.
Engagement metrics—which likes are a part of, in combination with comments, shares, and other meaningful interactions—reveal how much a post or video resonates with people. Unlike vanity metrics, engagement can't easily be inflated, making it a more reliable indicator of influence and connection.
These deeper metrics help you dominate conversations in your industry, encourage user-generated content, and drive long-term business outcomes.
In addition, for many businesses, the most important metric of their social media efforts is their direct impact on earnings.
While increasing conversions and sales is a common social media goal, managing the true impact of campaigns can be challenging due to difficulties in connecting cause and effect without clear tracking
The following social media metrics give you the best chance to assess how many sales were gained from an influencer or social media strategy:
The conversion rate tracks the percentage of viewers who complete your desired action after engaging with social media content. It usually invites people to the next stage of the marketing funnel, which could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading content. Tracking can be done for sales using UTM parameters and promo codes, which directly show how many customers each creator generated.
Cost per action (CPA) tells you exactly how much you're spending for each desired action a user takes. This social media metric helps you to figure out if you're making good use of your budget.
Other similar metrics to track include cost per click (CPC), which tells you the amount you spend to gain a click. Cost per mile (CPM) refers to the cost spent for 1,000 impressions. Cost per engagement (CPE) tells you how much you spend for every engagement. With all these metrics, lower numbers are better.
ROI tells you whether your efforts are truly paying off. It’s a comparison of all profits against all costs. Some would argue that this is the true indicator of social media performance. It’s no surprise that 70% of brands measure the ROI of campaigns.
However, it helps to know the lifetime value of your average customer to gain a clearer picture. If customers are likely to stick around as loyal customers for years, your overall return may be higher.
Long-term, sustainable growth brings the best overall returns. To keep building your brand through influencer marketing, you need to connect with the right people, strengthen your place in the conversation, and build your reputation.
Demographic data about influencers' audiences is crucial for ensuring that your social media strategy targets the right people. Instead of focusing solely on influencers with large followings, it’s more effective to choose those whose audience aligns with your target market. These influencers will save you money in the long run, as you can rely on them to develop impactful and relevant content.
Collecting key demographic factors such as age, gender, location, income, and interests, you can tailor campaigns to resonate more deeply with potential customers, improving engagement and conversion rates.
Tools like Kolsquare’s Chrome extension offer marketers free access to in-depth audience insights. This includes essential metrics like engagement rates, audience growth, and demographic information such as location and gender. Simply download the extension, sign up for a free account, log in, and start browsing influencers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. The extension works as a sidebar, providing you with data as you browse.
Start analysing influencer audiences from your browser today!
When diving into the complex analysis of a campaign, qualitative data becomes crucial. Although specific data points might not be available, a thorough analysis often reveals valuable trends and insights.
Brand sentiment reflects how people feel about your brand, providing a clear picture of your brand’s perception in the market. This key metric helps you understand if your audience views your brand positively, negatively, or neutrally. Positive sentiment, in particular, often leads to long-term gains, making it essential for assessing social media performance.
Brand awareness reflects how many social media users notice and reference your brand. High awareness means your brand is memorable.
Good indicators of brand awareness are the number of mentions, shares, and impressions across social media channels to see how often your brand is referenced and how well your messaging sticks in consumers' minds. This is crucial for ensuring your brand stays top-of-mind with your target audience.
Encouraging user-generated content can also enhance awareness, organically sparking additional social media activity by your followers. A strong brand awareness means customers are more likely to think of your brand when they are ready to make a purchase.
Influencer alignment is crucial for ensuring a brand's message is delivered authentically and resonates with the right audience. Marketing teams need to find those whose values, aesthetics, and goals align with their brand. This requires quantitative and qualitative analysis of an influencer's content, tone, and audience demographics.
When done effectively, influencer alignment enhances authenticity, builds trust, and strengthens the impact of your campaigns. As Neal Schaffer puts it, “Perhaps the biggest advantage of using influencers is that you have the opportunity to choose people who are part of your target market, or who appeal to your target market.”
Impactful influencers will put your brand at the forefront of industry conversations. Share of voice tracks the number of times your brand is mentioned by social media users versus how often competing brands are referenced.
Share of voice goes beyond just brand awareness by also encompassing customer engagement, reflecting how frequently your brand name is seen and how well customers interact with your content. It is crucial to understand how visible your brand is compared to its competitors and how the influencers they collaborate with are impacting the conversation.
Social listening provides valuable insights into audience sentiment, brand perception, and emerging trends through the analysis of real-time conversations on social platforms. It helps identify which influencers truly resonate with your audience, allowing you to analyse your share of voice by assessing metrics such as Earned Media Value (EMV), audience size, and engagement. Tools like customisable dashboards enable brands to track data by specific regions, ensuring relevance and accuracy.
Social listening offers numerous benefits for influencer marketing. It keeps brands aware of trending topics, helping them collaborate with influencers who are aligned with their industry. This approach also reduces advertising costs as influencers manage content creation and directly engage the target audience. Moreover, it helps brands monitor their reputation in real-time, addressing negative comments to improve public perception.
Brands can identify influential individuals discussing relevant topics to create more effective partnerships that enhance their ROI.
Conducting social listening and getting it right is time-consuming. In fact, 57% of brands rely on tools to guide their influencer marketing campaigns.
To measure social listening, brands should first define clear objectives, such as brand positioning, campaign performance, or identifying sales opportunities. Next, determine your data sources by selecting the most relevant social networks and digital media.
Kolsquare’s social listening module streamlines the process by enabling brands to:
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Brands can transform this data into strategic decisions to enhance brand reputation, refine marketing strategies, and improve customer experience.
Marketing teams need a comprehensive approach to run a data-driven social media strategy. Here is a list of social media metrics and how you can track them:
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, a data-driven solution that allows brands to scale their KOL Marketing strategies and implement authentic partnerships with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). Kolsquare’s technology enables marketing professionals to easily identify the best Content Creators profiles by filtering their content and audience, and to build and manage their campaigns from A to Z, including measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors. Kolsquare has built the largest community of influencer marketing experts in the world, and offers hundreds of customers (Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, El Corte Inglés, Lacoste, …) the latest Big Data, AI and Machine Learning technologies to drive inspiring partnerships, tapping into an exhaustive network covering 100% of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers in 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. As a Benefit Company, Kolsquare has been pioneering Responsible Influence by championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations to inspire change.
