An SME Guide to Social Media Metrics

As brick-and-mortar businesses have closed their doors over the previous 18 months, social media has expanded even more to become an essential part of the digital marketing toolkit. However, it can be difficult for busy SMEs to recognise the value when dealing with competing priorities.

When it’s challenging to demonstrate a clear return on investment, utilising social media can go to the bottom of the to-do list. However, with nearly 80% of the Australian population using social media, businesses that fail to optimise content across channels risk being left behind.

There are currently 4.2 billion active social media users, nearly double the number that existed just five years ago. Every day, these users spend an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes on social media. Those approximately 2.5 hours present a fantastic chance for firms to:

• increase brand awareness 
• develop consumer interactions and
• even make direct sales through social media channels.

In this blog, we look at the five social media KPIs that will be most important in 2021 and the strategies that SMEs can take to get the most bang for their money.

1. Organic Reach Rate

Organic reach is a social media marketing metric that counts the number of unique accounts that have seen a post on a particular site. In a nutshell, it counts the number of people who have seen the post at least once. Notably, organic reach excludes any reach that is the product of sponsored promotion and focuses on the post’s natural or ‘organic’ reach.

The golden rule of organic reach is to avoid spreading oneself too thin. Concentrating your efforts on a few important social networks will provide the best ROI for SMEs. Despite the fact that there are numerous platforms available, choosing which platforms to focus on is simpler than many people believe. Consider where your competitors and market leaders have a strong presence, what works for your competition, and which platforms your audience commonly engages with.

Concentrating your efforts on a single platform will also help you increase your organic reach rate. For example, Instagram’s algorithm favours reels, and with an organic reach rate of 10.79%, using reels increases your chances of reaching new followers and increasing your organic reach rate.

Posting evergreen content will increase your organic reach. Although different content types have distinct lifespans, that doesn’t mean you can’t post evergreen content or content that doesn’t have an expiration date. When uploading this type of information, use popular hashtags where appropriate to help ensure that your content is discoverable.

2. Engagement Rate

If you want to improve the efficacy of your content, engagement rate (ER) is a simple and versatile way to see how well your target audience receives your content.

ER is a metric used to calculate the amount of engagement generated by a social media post or campaign. It provides a rapid glimpse of the effectiveness of your content and is divided into public and private engagement.

The percentage of followers who interact with a post is referred to as the public ER, which is the amount of engagement from followers who engage with a post. Because it is based on publicly available interactions such as likes, comments, shares, or retweets, public ER is the best statistic to employ for competition benchmarking.

There are two methods for calculating the rate of engagement. The first analyses the number of engagements (likes, comments, shares, etc.) on a single post to the total number of unique people that viewed that specific post — this is referred to as the engagement rate per reach. The second compares the number of engagements on a single post to the overall number of followers on a page.

Begin by frequently posting at the same times of day to increase your ER. It also helps to offer content that encourages your followers to actively participate, such as voting in a poll. Building a brand voice also helps to increase engagement by generating relatable content with which people can connect.

It’s good to remember that it is fantastic to have a large number of followers if they’re involved, but unengaged followers don’t help you achieve your company goals.

3. Click-Through Rate

The click-through rate (CTR) compares the number of times a link is clicked to the total number of impressions and can help you determine how relevant and beneficial your links are to your followers.

It’s easy to rely on email marketing to perform the heavy lifting for you. However, according to Metigy’s latest Social Media Benchmark Report Q2 2021, social media platforms have high CTRs. On LinkedIn, for example, this can reach up to 4.3%, compared to the industry standard of 2.6% for email marketing.

Creating campaigns with your target audience in mind is advisable, inviting them to click on your links using targeted copy and relevant keywords.

4. Conversion Rate

A social media conversion rate examines all of your website’s conversions, correlates them to their individual sources, and then compares the conversions made by your social media marketing to the number of website visitors generated by your social media content.

A high conversion rate indicates that your content is valuable and engaging to your target audience. It’s an indicator, from a social media standpoint, that your post was relevant to the offer. In other words, it delivered on its promise.

It is good to remember that even if traffic is minimal, a post’s conversion rate can be high. The two measures are mutually exclusive.

5. Monthly Growth Rate

The growth rate (GR) reflects how well all of your indicators are performing overall. Overall, this is the most important sign of how well your campaign is doing.

As a result, the monthly growth rate calculates the rate of change in followers from the first to the last day of the month. Monitoring your GR is the most accurate statistic for determining how successful your social profiles are in developing and acquiring new followers.

For organisations trying to get ahead, using artificial intelligence (AI) to produce frequent content at ideal periods can boost monthly GR at higher rates across all socials. For example, Facebook had an average monthly GR of 1.80% without AI, whereas AI had an average monthly GR of 8.12%.

For SMEs, increasing your social media following means that customers are more likely to remember you the next time they shop online, especially if they see your material across multiple channels.

Final Thoughts and Where To Start

It is good to start modest when defining social media goals and tracking progress, and focus on two or three metrics to track. Work hard to understand your goals and how specific measurements can help you track your progress towards those goals. Once you’ve established a baseline, work on adjusting and optimising your social media content to meet your objectives.

Remember that your purpose for social media should not be to boost your KPIs. It should be to strengthen your social media approach, which will lead to an increase in your business goals. Metrics exist just to track progress and provide insight. If your social media stats continue to increase while your business goals remain unmet, it’s time to reconsider your strategy.