A Step-by-Step Guide on Using Social Media Metrics to Inform Your Organization’s Communication Strategy
Have you ever opened the “insights” on a Twitter or Instagram post?
If you have, you’ve likely been greeted by an influx of statistics at once. Impressions. Percentage of your audience following you vs. non-followers. Reach. Number of people who you engaged. How they were engaged. Number of link clicks. On and on.
Trying to parse through all these statistics may be so overwhelming that you end up closing out and ignoring them, sticking instead to just posting what you think is useful and crossing your fingers, hoping your target audience sees it.
If this sounds familiar, don’t worry. In this blog post, we’ll review what all those social media metrics mean and how they can serve as useful indicators of what is and isn’t going right for your organization’s communications strategy.
Key social media metrics
Let’s go through some definitions of what you’re seeing when you open up that data tab.
Impressions or Views — Impressions (especially if your post is a video, this is sometimes denoted as “views”) refers to how many times someone saw your post. If someone looks at your post twice, it counts as two impressions.
Reach — Reach refers generally to how many people saw your post. A few metrics within this blanket category include the number of unique accounts that saw a specific post, and the percentage of those accounts that were following you vs. not following you.
Engagement rate — Engagement rate is the percentage of people who interacted with your content out of the total number of people who engaged with your content. Think likes, comments, and shares, for example. Generally, you can calculate engagement rate by dividing the number of accounts who interacted with a piece of content over the total number of accounts who saw it.
Audience — Your audience generally refers to the number of followers that you have. These are the people who consistently choose to see and engage with your content.
Conversion rate — This refers to how many people complete a specific action contained within a CTA (call to action). For example, clicking a link or filling out a form. Notably, conversion rate is not the same as engagement rate.
Step-by-step guide on how to analyze your social media metrics
Step 1: Understand Your Goals
Before diving into the numbers, make sure you know what you’re trying to achieve. Are you:
Raising awareness about a campaign?
Getting more people to sign up for events?
Encouraging donations?
Increasing your volunteers?
Your goals will determine which metrics matter most. For example, if you’re focused on raising awareness, you’ll want to track metrics like reach and impressions.
Step 2: Pick Your Metrics
Once you have your goals, it’s time to decide which metrics you’ll be tracking. Remember: different metrics are useful for different goals. If you want more donations, for example, your conversion rate and engagement rate is going to be more useful than your follower count.
Step 3: Use Analytics Tools
All major social media platforms have built-in analytics tools, such as:
Facebook Insights
Twitter Analytics
Instagram Insights
LinkedIn Analytics
You can also use third-party tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Sprout Social for more advanced tracking. The CRM you use may also have built-in social analytics tools. Use these tools to find the data corresponding to the metrics you defined in step 2.
It may be helpful to track this data in a specific place so you can see how it changes over time. For example, track your average engagement rate every month in a spreadsheet, and you can share that with your team and stay on top of it without having to go back to find that data again.
Step 4: Identify Patterns
Look for trends in your data. For example:
Which posts got the most engagement?
What topics or types of content perform best?
Are there certain times of day when your audience is more active?
Which platforms drive the most traffic to your website?
Identifying these patterns helps you understand what’s working and refine your approach for better results.
And remember, always bring it back to the data. It’s easy to make assumptions, but without anything to back it up, you just have a hypothesis.
Step 5: Adjust Your Strategy
Use the insights you’ve gathered to improve your strategy. For example:
If videos perform better than text posts, create more videos.
If engagement drops on weekends, focus your efforts on weekdays.
If a certain type of post drives donations, make it a regular part of your content plan.
To keep it simple: do what works, and stop doing what doesn’t.
Once you make these changes, see if the new data is consistent with your findings so far. Treat it like a science experiment: you’ve made a hypothesis and have had a successful trial, but multiple trials are necessary to ensure you haven’t just gotten a fluke.
Step 6: Report and Share Your Results
Share your findings with your team or stakeholders. Create easy-to-understand reports that highlight:
Your goals
Key metrics and trends
Actions you’re taking based on the data
Results achieved so far
Regular updates keep everyone informed and help build support for your strategy. Clear reporting also demonstrates the value of your social media efforts.
Step 7: Keep Learning
Social media changes constantly, so stay curious and adaptable. Follow trends, test new features, and keep an eye on what other political organizations and brands are doing. Especially with a younger audience, nothing is more embarrassing than a brand hopping on a trend two weeks (or even two days) late. By staying on top of the latest developments, you’ll be ready to make the most of every opportunity.
With this guide, you’ll be able to approach your socials with a data-driven strategy instead of praying to the gods of the algorithm. If you want more help with your digital strategy, book a FREE 15-minute consultation with us today!