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Social Media Metrics You Need to Be Tracking

Social media metrics on an iPad Screen.

Social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram love numbers and are raring to give you countless metrics to look through and manage. However, not all those numbers are created equal. Some deserve more of your attention than others, and those should be understood and interpreted in a certain way. This guide will help you find the social media metrics you need to be tracking and pick out the valuable numbers.

Growth Rate

Your follower number is a central number on your accounts and an easy thing to fixate on. Your follower number does provide a broad impression of your audience, but a small or large number doesn’t provide much information for planning your accounts’ content. Furthermore, while some followers are certainly legitimate, other followers could be automated accounts or accounts that haven’t signed in for years. This is why it’s often called a “vanity metric”. 

Instead, how your follow number changes is the metric your need to be tracking. The rate of growth in your followers over certain periods of time is a lot more informative and valuable. This reflects your account’s performance to determine which content and strategies prove effective for growing your audience. These metrics also are more informative about your audience, since they reflect active followers who are more likely to engage with your content. 

Reach

Reach is an insightful metric you need to be tracking and monitoring. This records the number of different individuals who have seen your content. This is different from impressions or views, which track the total amount of times something was seen, including repeats by the same people. Reach more accurately reflects the size of the audience that is viewing your social media content.

Reach will often differ from your follower number. No social media account sees its content reaching all its followers. However, reach does not only measure your followers. It tracks every user who has seen your content, and that includes followers as well as those who may have seen it through hashtags, recommendations by the platform, or through shares from other users. It’s the entire net your social media has cast. 

This is why “reach rate” is not an accurate metric. Reach rate is calculated by dividing the reach of some content by the number of your followers. For example, if you have 400 followers and a post’s reach was 100, that is a reach rate of 25%. However, because reach doesn’t just include your followers, this rate doesn’t really tell you anything. 

Growing your reach is essential to increasing your social media’s audience. Different aspects can affect a post’s reach. The time of posting, the hashtags, key phrases, and the kind of content can all affect how far a post spreads. Keep any of these factors in mind when you’re tracking this metric to determine the most effective strategies for expanding your social media’s reach.

Engagement Rates

Another metric you need to track that tells you more than just how many eyeballs saw your content, is how many people take the effort to “engage” with it. Social media engagement refers to any action that goes beyond viewership. Likes, comments, saves, favorites, shares, and reposts are all forms of engagement that reflect members of your audience going beyond just passive viewership. Engagement provides the insightful metric of not how many people saw it or how often, but how many truly internalized the content to be able to form some kind of response that led to a real action.

Engagement is also important because it’s part of how social media algorithms, including Facebook’s, Instagram’s, and TikTok’s, prioritize content in people’s feeds. Posts with better engagement will populate higher on follower’s feeds and as recommendations. Therefore, engagement rates are not merely a metric you need to track for what is really reaching and speaking to your audience, but also for how to improve that reach.

Saves and Shares 

Saves and shares are a form of engagement that deserve your special attention. Social media services allow users to both “save” or “favorite” posts to their account and share them to others. Both these metrics are also recorded, and you need to track them. Sharing or saving means users were not merely wanting to momentarily engage with a piece of content. Saving indicates they want to come back to it and look at it multiple times, and possible show others. Sharing means someone felt a certain piece of content needed to be shown to someone else. Both are fantastic ways to see what kind of content is engaging and will help you grow a devoted following. 

You Need to Track and Analyze

These are the social media metrics you need to be tracking, but they aren’t entirely straightforward. The numbers never just speak for themselves. There are a lot of factors that can change your account’s growth rate and its contents’ reach and engagement. That’s why you need to interpret the data accordingly. If you are noticing certain trends and want help figuring out how to improve your growth, reach, engagement rates or want to start using some platforms that help manage this data, contact Rosewood’s social media marketing team, who are masters of understanding the metrics you need to be tracking.

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How to Hire an Influencer

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Social media remains vital to your business and influencers can help you use it to its maximum potential. Influencer marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies. At least 61% of people trust a brand because of an influencer’s recommendation. Every dollar spent on an influencer campaign earns an average $5.79. This gives it one of the highest ROIs compared to other marketing strategies. You’re probably looking to hire an influencer for your brand and are curious how to start. An influencer relationship will ideally be long, so be certain to make relationships with the best influencers for your business. Here are some key tips for how to hire an influencer.

Determine Goals and Budget

As with anything for your business, you need to establish a goal and plan for hiring an influencer. Determine the promotion’s length and cost. You should also consider the sizes of influencer you are looking to hire to properly scale the promotion’s budget. Mega influencers bring large followings but also big price tags. Micro- and mini-influencers may have smaller follower numbers, but they boast higher engagement rates, can provide a closer partnership, and will cost your business less. 

The kind of campaign

Part of determining that budget will rely on you determining the type of promotion you’re hoping to get from an influencer. Here are some of the most common types of influencer promotions:

  • One-time mention – An influencer mentions a business in one piece of content 
  • Content integration – Products or services become part of the influencer’s content. For example, a fashion influencer may include a product as part of an outfit. 
  • Collaboration – An influencer works with a company to design a specific product. 
  • Review/Unboxing – An influencer creates content products and/or provides a (hopefully) positive review of your products/services.
  • Long-term cooperation – Sometimes called an ambassadorship. These are prolonged influencer relationships, which can include other kinds of the above campaigns. 

The kind of promotion will determine the cost. A one-time mention may be better suited for an influencer with a bigger audience, where you will have a larger, single payment. Other promotions like content integration, collaborations, and ambassadorships will be longer partnerships and contracts, so plan accordingly.  A digital marketing team can help you determine the right kind of promotion.

Consider Your Target

The strength of influencer marketing comes from their ability to reach and interact with those they influence: their audience. When hiring an influencer, be sure that their community aligns with your own business’ target. A proper match will advocate your business to many potential clients or customers. On the other hand, an engaged audience will mean little if it does not include those likely to be interested in your products or services. 

Fits your Brand

Along with your audiences, your brand and an influencer’s need to align, especially if you plan to have a prolonged promotional partnership with them. Be certain an influencer’s values, messaging, and tone pair well with your own business’. They don’t need to be identical, but they should be collaborative. Research their reputation and consider how that might affect your business. When an influencer’s values or messaging oppose your brand’s, it can lead to confusion, misrepresentation, or even damage your business.

Watch Their Work

When you have determined a prospective influencer you may want to hire, follow their content. The best influencers engage their audience with consistent content.  Watch how they regularly engage their audience. Do they respond to comments? Are they posting content daily or weekly?  These are key performance factors to help you determine the strength and value of an influencer to help your business reach a target. This analysis will also help you determine aspects of their brand and whether their followers are your target audience or filled with ranks of automated bots.

Develop a Relationship

The best relationships with influencers develop organically. You can begin interacting with an influencer by engaging with their content. This allows your business to capture their attention. Even better, you may have a previously built relationship. An influencer may have already recommended your products or services themselves, or you have previously sent them products which they enjoyed. This will put your hiring proposal before others who lack any familiarity with the influencer. 

The Hiring Process – Proper Communication

Once you have chosen an influencer and established a rapport, you need to propose hiring them. Use the preferred communication channels. Many prefer an email and provide one on their profiles. If there isn’t one provided, directly message the account and they should provide you with contact information. For smaller influencers, this communication will often be directly with the influencer themselves, but larger influencers may have a team who help them coordinate promotions and agreements.

In your communications, be clear about the kind of promotion, the products or services, and your goals. Explain to the influencer why you believe their perfect for the promotion, the products/services, and your business. In turn, listen to their suggestions or feedback about the promotion. They know their audience and how to create content. Maintaining this dialogue will be vital to continuing a long-term partnership between your business and said influencer. You can then negotiate payment to draw and finalize a contract. Compensation can take monetary and gifting forms.  

Time to Start

Following these tips will help you be successful in hiring the right influencer, with whom your business will hopefully have a long relationship. The most effective influencer marketing is a sustained partnership where their audience becomes attached to your brand by association.  If you need help creating influencer relationships or planning a promotion, contact Rosewood’s digital services team.  Their social media expertise can help you determine promotion type, find the right influencers, and start building relationships.

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5 Essential Places to List Your Business

Phone screen showing various online directory apps

Today, it’s typical that people find businesses through internet searches. Whether it is through search engines, map apps, or social media, it is crucial to list your business on various services for your business’ discoverability. 

Listing services or online directories populate your business into search results and are the main way users and potential customers will learn about your business. Most of these will allow you to add important information about your business, such as its name, logo, location, hours, contact information, and any other pertinent information, e.g. a restaurant can include its menu. Depending on the service, you can also include photos, make regular posts, announce events, and provide offers.

Listings are a great way to establish a good reputation. On some, like Google and Facebook, users can leave reviews and ratings of your business. On other directories, they can also recommend your businesses in comments. These reviews boost consumer trust, with at least 73% of consumers trusting other customer reviews. By creating a listing, you also take control of this reputation. You can verify and take steps to remove false, negative reviews. You can similarly upload high quality photos and remove users’ poor-quality ones to ensure a good impression.

These listings are also a great way to connect with your customers. You can respond to the reviews, thank those celebrating your services or attempt to address those who may have complaints. Users and customers can also contact you through direct messaging on these services with questions, and you can respond to them directly.

Local Matters

While online directories allow people from a wider geographic range to find your business digitally, they’re extremely important for local business. Research shows that 97% of users search for local business, with 46% of all searches aimed at finding a local answer. Similarly, 76% of customers look at a business’ online presence before they physically visit. So even if your business’ operations are entirely physical and in-person, your discoverability among a local clientele still depends on these listings.

Listing Services/Online Directories

There is a myriad of places where you could list your business on the internet. It would be impossible to put your business everywhere, besides an ineffective use of your time. Let’s be honest, no one’s using the yellow pages anymore. Here are first five services where you should be listing your business.

Google Business Profile

Previously Google My Business, a Google Business Profile is listing for your business that appears in Google Search and Maps. Creating a Google profile for your business should be your first step to listing your business online. Google still holds more than 79% of all desktop searches, and on mobile it accounts for 60% of all searches, making a Google Business Profile is an easy way to immediately improve discoverability. 

Apple Places

While Google Maps is the primary service for desktop and Android searches, many iOS users prefer the default Apple Maps app for searching their area. As a result, it’s a good idea to also register a Business Place on Apple, which will list your business on Apple Maps and populate it in Safari and Siri search recommendations.

Bing Places

Google may be king, but don’t count out Bing. Microsoft’s search engine still has over 1.114 billion users, part of which stems from the fact that it is built into every Windows install. 55% of those users search for products and businesses. For full search coverage, it’s best to add your business as a Bing Place.

Facebook Pages

Facebook Pages for businesses are aimed at increasing their discoverability among an audience. Users can become fans of your business. This means they will see any updates, posts, or new photos you upload in their feed. Any post they like or engage with will also populate into their friends’ feeds, and Facebook can also populate your page into their feed as a recommendation.

LinkedIn Pages

LinkedIn pages, like Facebook pages allow you create posts and have followers. A LinkedIn page also creates and builds a network for your business among your employees and their connections. It also allows you to connect to other business’ pages. While general consumers are less likely to find a business through LinkedIn, it is especially advantageous if your business regularly partners with or provides services for other businesses or professionals. 

Some other recommendations

Tripadvisor

Many users refer to Tripadvisor for customer reviews, especially in the hospitality industry. If your business is in this industry, it’s a good idea to create or take control of your business’ listing. 

Instagram and TikTok

You are probably all too aware that social media is extremely important for your business and customer outreach. However, a business page on Instagram and TikTok is only becoming increasingly important for discoverability. A Google senior vice president recently referenced an internal study that found 40% of young people search for local businesses, especially restaurants, through TikTok and Instagram rather than through Google.

Getting Your Listings Together

Creating these listings can take some work. Reach out to Rosewood Marketing, and we can also help you discover more specialized online directories suitable to list your business. We can also help you develop your brand to create cohesive and consistent listings. Our photography and videography team can help you create striking visual content. Lastly, our Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing teams are masters of creating content and engagement to help you create productive listings. 

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