KPIsSocial listening

How to Set the Right Social Media KPIs

Fredrik Roglar
  • By Fredrik Roglar

For many brands, tracking social media performance is treated like a mystery, and it is easy to be overwhelmed with the emergence of new platforms and formats that leave you feeling behind the curve.

It doesn’t have to be that way! In this blog post, Whispr Group’s Senior Product Associate and marketing insights expert Fredrik Roglar explains how to set the right KPIs to effectively measure your social media performance and remove doubt from the equation.

What are the fundamental social KPIs every brand should be looking at?

If you’re analysing your own marketing output, there are a few pillars to choose from. Reach, Engagement Rate,

Sentiment (the proportion of positive vs negative comments on your marketing output), Shares, Saves and Link Clicks.

Then there’s Video Retention Rate if you work with video ads – most social channels provide that important data on how long someone has watched a clip. There’s no point in paying a fortune to make minute long video clips for example if it turns out 95% of people stopped watching after three seconds.

Those are important KPIs for measuring your own output. But it’s also worthwhile adding some KPIs to measure what other people communicate about your brand. One could be measuring Source for those comments: are people speaking about your brand and its campaigns on Twitter, on Instagram? Where is the conversation taking place? That’s important to know.

So is there a magic number for how many Social KPIs you should have then? How many is too many, or too few?

It’s relatively easy to try to increase hard numbers, but the real key is to try to effectively work towards meaningful KPIs, and you can’t do that with too many.

Two or three things to focus on truly improving is more effective. If you’re focusing on Comments, can you increase the number of positive comments rather than just focusing on increasing the number of comments full stop? Can you increase clicks on links instead of just increasing shares?

And you can always simultaneously track other data points outside of those core KPIs in case you need it for context or if it becomes relevant later on. Focus on truly improving two to three things.

At the same time you can track other data points in case you need it for context or if it becomes relevant later on.

Can you explain the importance of adding an extra layer of ‘soft’ metrics to tracking Social KPIs? 

You always start out by measuring something purely in numbers. But while a figure can look really good on its own – your engagement went up, your comments went up – the additional ‘soft’ layer of analysis that we do at Whispr Group tells you how those comments look.

For example, if your comments have gone up and you measure it purely in numbers you may think it’s a win. But if many of those comments are negative towards your brand, then that’s not a good thing. Adding soft metrics stops you from taking hasty conclusions where pure numbers could paint a misleading picture.

Key Takeaways

  • Regardless of your brand there are some fundamental KPIs to choose from: Reach, Engagement Rate, Sentiment, Shares, Saves, Link Clicks and Video Retention Rates are some of the basics and most important.
  • Remember though that it’s more effective to pick two or three KPIs that you can truly focus on improving in a meaningful way than casting the net too wide. At the same time you can track additional data for extra context or future reference.
  • That said, numbers in isolation are often misleading. Adding an additional layer of ‘soft’ analysis with the help of an insights partner like Whispr Group will help you to understand why those numbers look the way they do. Don’t make the mistake of drawing hasty conclusions based purely on figures – it could be costly!

Want to know how Whispr Group’s teams can help you? Get in touch below. 

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