A decade ago, there was no need for companies to have a dedicated social media team to run the accounts for their brands successfully. Nowadays, social media platforms are some of the most important marketing and communication tools for businesses and corporations, where brand representatives collaborate and engage with audiences, create content, produce videos, and collect and analyze statistics.

Today’s high-performing social media teams try not to concentrate on vanity metrics anymore to enhance the performance of their accounts. Instead, the top performers try to track all necessary aspects that allow improving results, including what type of content brings the best performance and what does not.

Why tracking metrics matters in social media

With the increase in the number of brands on social networks, tracking and collecting the necessary information have become the key activities to boost social media performance. By doing so, businesses can:

• Understand what type of content is effective and which is not.
• Discover the social media network where the company performs the best. Analyze audiences and the way they interact with posts and other types of content.
• Identify what causes trust and conversion from social networks.
• Measure the efficiency of different elements of the content creation process.

It goes without saying that if you do not track the relevant information, it will be hard to evaluate your social media activities’ performance. This is why many businesses invest in deep social media analytics tools such as Sprinklr Social or Hootsuite that help monitor engagement, audience behavior, and campaign performance in real time.

Key metrics high-performing social media teams track

Focusing on Engagement Instead of Vanity Metrics

As far as social media engagement metrics are concerned, vanity metrics should not be considered as the main ones. Even if likes and followers can tell how visible a profile is, they are not capable of measuring engagement and interaction properly.

What high-performing teams should consider when tracking their performance:

• Shares
• Saves
• Comments
• Watch time
• Clicks
• Profile visits
• Direct messages

Even if a post gets few likes, it does not mean that it has failed because, probably, it got numerous saves and shares instead of likes.

The Effectiveness of Storytelling

Nowadays, modern audiences do not like posts with advertising too much. Hence, it is important for high-performing brands to think about other types of content that can attract users.

Usually, the most successful posts are those that:

• Are authentic
• Include real people in the shot
• Tell something interesting to followers
• Describe experience
• Establish an emotional bond with users

Instead of asking yourself if the post was liked by someone, it is better to ask whether or not the user decided to stop scrolling through feeds after seeing your content.

Consistency and Workflow Efficiency

One of the most significant mistakes of social media teams is complicating content creation, which makes brands post content with a delay. Platforms reward consistent content creators.

The following metrics should be tracked:

• Frequency of posting
• Consistency
• Approvals of the team members
• Time needed to complete a task
• Bottlenecks in the content creation process

It is always good to establish efficient processes that would make posting simpler and faster.

Story Metrics

Story features are very popular among brands today. Users usually watch them because they seem more intimate and personal. The most important metrics related to Instagram stories include:

• Story completion rate
• Participation in polls
• Reactions
• Clicks on the links added
• Interaction with stickers

Stories can be used to share behind-the-scenes pictures, talk about recent events, provide some information, and establish a connection with the followers.

Tracking People-Focused Content

People trust other people rather than logos, which is why successful teams pay lots of attention to the content that tells about founders, employees, customers, and community. Some teams even try to find the most creative content creators to collaborate with.

It is also a good idea to compare the performance metrics of the posts that have been created based on people and those that represent only the logo.

Video Performance Metrics

Video content is becoming popular nowadays. However, today high-performing teams take video production seriously, meaning that video is not considered as something extra for brands anymore.

The following are the most important metrics to keep in mind:

• Watch time
• Retention rate
• Percentage of watching
• Replication rate
• Saving/sharing video

When creating videos, the most important things to consider are relevance and authenticity. Mobile videos with interesting hooks are usually appreciated by users who are not interested in sophisticated productions. Teams can also repurpose high-performing video clips into lightweight, shareable formats using a video to GIF converter, making it easier to increase engagement across comments, replies, and social posts.

Scheduling and Reacting to Events

While many social media strategies imply using scheduling software, the most successful teams try to strike a balance between scheduling and reacting.

The majority of high-performing teams follow this formula: 70% of scheduled content, 20% of reactives, and 10% experiments.

By evaluating the effectiveness of different types of posts, a brand can easily modify its strategy in the future.

Building a Community and Trust

Nowadays, social media platforms have become an important trust channel, where brands can prove that they are reliable, trustworthy, and loyal. It is very easy to assess how well social media platforms promote a brand, since:

• Response time
• Company transparency
• Tones of the conversation
• Brand consistency
• Humanization of the profile

All of the above-mentioned factors can be easily measured by analyzing customer sentiment, engagement with posts, community activity, and mentions.

Competitors and Performance Comparison

To better understand what works for a brand, teams should check what works for competitors. With social media competitor analysis tools, it is possible to track the following metrics:

• Engagement level of the competitors
• Frequency of posts
• Trends
• Audience reaction
• Performance of certain campaigns

Conclusion

High-performing social media teams know what they should be focused on when trying to improve results. Instead of measuring vanity metrics, they tend to evaluate the efficiency of people’s interaction, storytelling techniques, efficiency of workflows, and community trust.