The Ultimate Guide to Measuring Social Media KPIs for SMEs

Anoop John | Updated 10 Oct 2023 | 3 min read

So, you have identified the social media your customers hang out in and set up an account.

You are getting some likes, but how do you actually know whether your social media efforts are in the right direction?

Social media is not about tracking ‘mere likes’ and waiting for your products to magically sell.

Your efforts should be highly data-driven.

Thus, this article will equip you to measure all your social media Key Performance Metrics (KPIs), making sure that your business is actually getting the value out of it.

The ultimate goal of any social media venture is to sell your products or services and make more profit for your business.

But that doesn’t happen on day one.

Organically growing your social media is a long haul, one that requires consistency and patience and multiple experimentations.

Here are the Social Media KPIs you should measure

Reach
Impressions
Engagement
Shares and mentions
Website visits.
Leads conversion

6 Essential Social Media KPIs

1. Reach

Your social media actually needs an audience to see the content you put out! So the first aim is to build a following for your page. You can do this through paid ad campaigns, influencer marketing, using the right hashtag strategy, and so on. All this given that you have the content that really connects with your audience. Thus reach can be measured in terms of followers, by the following formula -

Audience growth rate = new followers (for the week/month) /total followers * 100

2. Impressions

Impressions are the number of times your post appeared on the newsfeed. Different platforms have various content preferences. For example, Instagram prefers portraits more and demotes posts with a lot of text. Facebook on the other hand gives more preference to videos. Make sure that the average number of impressions (measured per week or month) for the posts are on a rise.

3. Engagement

This is an important measure and tells you how well your content resonates with your audience. It can be measured from the number of likes and comments. Having more comments is a greater measure of engagement, as comments actually allow you to interact with your audience and build a relationship with them. Thus you should ideally look at optimizing the number of comments.

Average Engagement Rate = total (likes + comments)/number of followers * 100
[ for a weekly or monthly period]

4. Shares and Mentions

Shares and mentions are the strongest measures of brand value and loyalty. They are as powerful as the real world ‘word of mouth.’

Share rate = Total shares (for a week or month) / number of followers * 100

The number of social mentions of your brand should also increase month after month. You can compare the number of social mentions with that of your competitors.

5. Website Visits

How many people are visiting your website from your social media campaigns? This can be easily tracked through Google Analytics. It is also important to check the session time from each of these campaigns. If the session time is low, you need to either optimize your website or modify your audience targeting.

6. Lead conversions

How many of the people visiting your website from social media are making inquiries for your product? Or how many of them are signing up for your newsletter. This is another measure you should track and is called lead rate -

Lead rate - leads/ website visitors (from social media) *100

Again, this can be done on a weekly or monthly basis.

Are your social media efforts profitable?

Don’t blindly put your money into social media, instead measure the ROI from your efforts using social media KPIs. This can be done by measuring the number of leads obtained for a particular period of time divided by the amount spent on social media for that period of time. The cost per lead should ideally decrease over-time.

There are also various social media analytics tools that help you track data end to end. Making your social media game data-driven, consistent, and innovative can help get the customers you need for your business.