Kseniya I. Content Marketing Expert

Key SMM metrics for business

What to analyze when promoting on social networks in 2022? Let's see what you can take on as a contractor in SMM or what you can require from specialists if you are a customer.

1. Subscribers.

Previously, the metric was the main indicator of the effectiveness of the work of SMM experts. Now with the help of the smart feeds on Facebook and Instagram content began to be shown taking into account personalized interests. That is, each user has his own feed. As a result, the reach rate in the communities began to decline. In fact, the more often a user interacts with the content of the page on social networks, the higher the chance that this user will see the posts of the community in the feed. Frequent posting, which saved accounts at the dawn of the formation of SMM, is no longer effective.

2. Engagement.

ER (Engagement Rate, engagement level) is an indicator that reflects how often the audience of your social media account interacts with your publications. There is a conditional ER, which is calculated from the total number of subscribers, and there is ER reach, which means the percentage of those involved from those who were reached. The higher the ER, the more interesting the posts are to subscribers, that is, they leave likes, write comments, save posts and share with friends and subscribers.

Given the above, it is logical to assume that special attention should be paid to the ER reach indicator. At the same time, you should separate the measurement of this metric - separately for paid, that is, advertising, reach and separately - for free, organic. And so the next important KPI for social media promotion is…

3. Reach.

This is probably the most important metric in SMM. Post reach, ad reach (together with a low cost of reach), average account reach per month… The most important thing for a business to understand when promoting on social media is that you will ALWAYS pay for reach even for those followers who were already gained by means of paid promotions. Unless, of course, you are not satisfied with the reach of 10-20% (this is in a good scenario) of the entire audience of subscribers.

That is why every year we hear the groans of SMM and community managers about how "organic reach falls" -organic reach means free.

This issue, of course, is most of all associated with the "greed" of social network owners. After all, the owners of social networks are interested in the fact that advertisers have a constant need for advertising, all their investments in increasing interaction with users mean profit for the social network itself.

4. Number of brand mentions.

It is determined by the hashtag or account marks among other users. The metric is closely related to the direction of work on the stimulation of user-generated content - UGC. Naturally, it also depends on the quality of the product / page content / brand image.

The more willingly users share information about you or "share" your content, the higher brand awareness in social networks. Naturally, not only the numerical, but also the qualitative nature of the references is evaluated i.e negative/neutral/positive.

5. Traffic to the website.

It is measured using web analytics systems.

Remember that just link clicks in ads or posts do not bring any benefit, except that they look beautiful in the report. It is necessary to track exactly the transitions to the website.

In addition, an important metric is the time spent by the user on the website, because the target audience interested in the service/product will carefully study your offer.

6. The number of leads and targeted actions and their price.

If your product is selling on social media, keep track of how much it costs you to acquire customers at each stage of the sales funnel. These metrics are more often relevant only in the traffic section, the content strategy usually works for the image and expert components.

7. Sales.

Yes, it is important to consider the profit and payback of advertising. But converting the leads to sales is not the responsibility of an SMM expert; most often, customer requests are processed by the sales department. This only means that the SMM expert cannot be responsible for bringing the client to the transaction. SMM expert shouldn’t take your business risks. SMM is not a business owner. This person doesn’t make deals and doesn't talk to clients on the phone. That is why there is no and cannot be SMM for a percentage of sales.

If you receive such an offer it’s better to refuse. If you are a businessman and you want to offer this to your SMM expert, do not risk it. Professionals will refuse, they value their work and understand what metrics they can be responsible for.

Only newbies can agree to this but no one will guarantee that you will save money. It may turn to drainage of the advertising budgets due to inexperience and saving on SMM manager salary will not save the situation.

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