The 3 Types of 


Social Media Metrics

(and Why They’ll Get You Promoted)

THE THOUGHTFUL MARKETER’S GUIDE

 A Letter from Jay
I’ve been in marketing a long time. I’ve seen a lot of reports;
I’ve created a lot of reports. I have not seen a marketing
report that can deliver everything to everyone.
I actually don’t think it is possible to have one report for all
stakeholders in an organization. It’s time-consuming and
messy and what usually ends up happening is no one finds
value in it.
Rather, in this eBook we take a hard look at what social media
metrics are imperative, how those relate to the business
objectives and how to find them. We also outline three levels
of critical reporting.
With the three levels, you not only potentially speed up your
time, but you can deliver exactly what each level of
management needs at the time they need it. And that will
keep you happy, your boss happy and your boss’s boss very
happy.
Enjoy.

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 The Metrics Imperative
“The goal is not to be good at social media,

the goal is to be good at BUSINESS because
of social media.”
—Jay Baer, President, Convince & Convert

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The Metrics Metrics Matter More Than Ever
Imperative
Social media analytics tell you if your marketing is
successful: your content is being seen, your audience is
The Good responsive to your brand message and your products or
services are eventually being purchased.

There are many social media metrics available and a vast

array of methods and tools with which to measure. All of
The Bad these can provide substantial data but the options can be
difficult to parse.

Social media metrics are more visible to the public than

most business metrics. Customers—and, less desirably,
competitors—can see at a glance how many people are
The Ugly following you, which accounts you are following back, and
how many likes, comments, shares and retweets your
content is getting.
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The Metrics Social Media Costs Are Rising
Imperative
Participating in social media is essentially a required activity in today’s
tech-driven world, yet many businesses erroneously consider social
media to be the “free” or “cheap” part of marketing.

The reality is, it’s not free at all.

There are a multitude of costs associated with social
media, and these costs continue to increase each
year.
Companies need to address the rising investment in
time, tools, advertising, influencer activity and
scarcity of talent when it comes to setting up their
social media strategy. Talent and financial resources
are not limitless.

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The Metrics
Imperative
“The best dollars and cents
come when you start to
make process improvements
based on feedback.”
— Frank Eliason, BrainTrust Partners
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…and Metrics Determine If It’s Worth It
Tracking where an audience is spending its time,
attention and money empowers businesses to be
more efficient overall in their own marketing
strategy.
Budget, resources, timelines, products and
processes can all be better optimized through
collecting and analyzing both quantitative and
qualitative data of how people are interacting
with your brand.
In the end, metrics and optimization lead to
better business ROI (Return On Investment).
ROI = (Revenue – Cost) / Cost
$
$
6
The Metrics
Imperative
“Just because followers may
not directly turn into
customers doesn't mean
they're not valuable.”
— Pamela Vaughan, Principal Marketing
Manager of Web Strategy, HubSpot
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There Is No Magic Number
Many social media marketers emphasize engagement in their
metrics. That’s not wrong, necessarily, but it’s limited.
Engagement in social is just part of the customer’s
journey with the brand:
Positive social media engagement fosters trust
Trust leads to loyalty
Loyalty converts customers into advocates
Advocates generate new audiences
Audiences build community
In the end, there is no single number (other than sales) that can
adequately represent the value of a strong social media
community. This is why thoughtful marketers need a panoply of
data points to effectively measure social media outcomes.
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The Metrics Why Many Social Media Analytics Fail
Imperative A surprising number of businesses don’t track proper social media
metrics simply because they don’t know how or where to start.

x≠y
Certainly, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data
that could be collected, but saying “social media isn’t measurable”
isn’t a valid excuse.
So how can a company free themselves from “analysis paralysis?”
The first step to avoiding failure is realizing that having access to
every piece of information available doesn’t mean that the results will
be useful—or even relevant—to your business. With that in mind,
don’t put the cart before the horse by making KPIs (Key Performance
Indicators) fit a goal after the fact. Be selective about business
objectives, and then determine which analytics and processes
need to be put in place to reach those objectives.
You first must understand your strategy. Why are you doing social
media at all? Then measure against the accomplishment of that
strategy.

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The Metrics
Imperative
“You may not be interested
in strategy, but strategy is
interested in you.”
— Leon Trotsky
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The Strategy Imperative
Marketing strategy is the deliberate planning of how a
company will develop its brand image and grow its
audience over time. Social media is a formidable tool in
supporting strategy, but only if it is first tied to specific
business goals—and subsequently planned, tracked
and analyzed.
Failing to properly address any of these aspects doesn’t
necessarily mean social media won’t work for you, but there
can be repercussions.
At a minimum, a lack of social media strategy can induce
team confusion, create extraneous work and extend
timelines.
But on a higher level, eschewing social media data
collection and analysis can misinform future product or
service development, waste human and financial resources
and even possibly erode brand reputation within the
customer base. You can’t perfect what you don’t measure.
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The Metrics
Imperative
“Goals are pure fantasy
unless you have a specific
plan to achieve them.”
— Stephen Covey
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Use Strategy to Reach Common Goals
A clear social media strategy can be extremely effective when
aligned with core business goals.
Three of the most important corporate objectives that
social media can impact are:
Market share, as
Customer
Revenue, in the satisfaction, as
exhibited by brand
form of traffic, leads measured by
awareness, audience
and sales sentiment and
size and engagement
advocacy
In addition, meeting these primary goals often provides other
benefits, such as increased process efficiency, reduced costs
and improved product or service quality.
By cohesively meshing the interactive heart of social media
with SMART goals, an organization can truly prime
themselves for ongoing marketing success.
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The Metrics SMART Goals
Imperative
Stay SMART:
Avoid generalities; be clear in
Specific
“We are surrounded by data, your objective
but starved for insights.” Be able to calculate parameters such
Measurable as time, cost, clicks
— Jay Baer

Make sure your goal can actually

Attainable be accomplished

Ensure the goal ties up to a broader

Relevant
business objective

Set the realistic timeframe in which a goal

Timely
should be accomplished

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 What & How
Much to Measure
“Measure what is measurable,
and make measurable what is not so.”
—Galileo Galilei

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What & How The Strategy Imperative
Much to Measure

Good Likes

Better Shares and Mentions

Sales from Social

Best Media Posts

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What & How Audience
Much to Measure
Marketers want to be reassured that their intended
audiences know about the brands they service. Awareness
can be quantified via a selection of social media metrics.
‣ Followers – the number of people in each of your social
networks
‣ Audience growth rate – a ratio of how your networks are
adding or subtracting new followers compared to total
number of followers
Awareness is the top of the funnel that guides
customers from knowing, into liking, into trusting.

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What & How Audience Growth Rate
Much to Measure
Audience Growth Rate (AGR) is a deceptively simple KPI that
shows how fast you are gaining (or losing) followers on any
given social media channel.
AGR = # of new followers in a given period / # of total followers.
The benefit to calculating an AGR is that it allows marketing to
baseline a velocity, or an estimated potential, for a larger audience
size. For instance, if a brand has a high AGR during a social
campaign period, it might be tempting to declare the campaign a
glowing success.
However, unless it has an AGR that is benchmarked against a
historical average, it can provide deceiving information. That
successful campaign AGR could actually be attributed to other
factors. Perhaps the company’s PR team obtained a high profile
press placement that drove new followers. Or maybe product
packaging or other collateral was redesigned to include social
profiles. Changes outside of the social media team’s control can
have a impact on AGR within any given timeframe, so it’s worth
researching where your new followers may be really coming from.

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What & How Applause
Much to Measure
There are four primary types of customer
engagement through social media (shown in
order of effort taken by the customer, from
least to most).
1. Like – provides a baseline validation that the
content was seen and appreciated
2. Comment – requires a moderate-to-high effort for a
customer to craft and post
3. Share – demonstrates a customer not only saw and
validated the content, but also deemed it relevant
enough in some way to propagate in their own
network
4. Mentions – the number of times people have talked
about or to you

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What & How Applause Rate
Much to Measure To measure engagement, social media marketers look at two main
conversation KPIs: Rate/Post and Rate.
Rate/Post = # of engagements (likes, comments, shares) per post.
Rate = # of engagements per post / # of overall followers.
The more targeted your audience, the higher your engagement rate/
post and rate tend to run. This is why it’s not a good idea to “buy”
followers–artificial inflation of audience will only serve to decrease the
engagement rate of your genuine followers.
Engagement Rate KPIs are important because they indicate your
audience is actively invested in your content…and an invested
audience is more likely to buy. Tools such as Rival IQ and Simply
Measured are extremely helpful when calculating engagement and
conversion tracking.
Worth noting: because social media users now follow many brands,
and platforms charge for post visibility, the average engagement rate
has significantly decreased over the past few years across all
industries.

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What & How Social Sentiment
Much to Measure One of the most powerful social media metrics a business can track is
sentiment. While straightforward to understand—is your audience saying
positive, negative or neutral things about your brand?—it’s a bit tricky to
actually capture.
The primary challenge lies in the fact that people talk about your brand all
the time…but don’t usually explicitly let you know. Many savvy users know
how to tag a brand on social media in order to draw direct attention to
something (usually a compliment or a complaint).
However, many more users do not tag at all. This puts an onus on the
company to prioritize brand monitoring as part of their social media
strategy.
The more mentions (tagged or not) that can be captured, the more
interaction opportunities a business has to reward the positives and
address the negatives.

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What & How Social Sentiment
Much to Measure Enterprise-level tools such as Sprinklr and
Salesforce Marketing Cloud (formerly Radian6)
include keyword-triggered sentiment tracking, but be
aware that this functionality has limitations: human
review is frequently necessary to correct mistagged
posts and to “train” the tool’s sentiment
interpretations over time.
Furthermore, sentiment is a qualitative metric, not
a quantitative one, such as mentions, likes,
comments, shares and retweets. Sentiment adds
context to marketing success; it illuminates the
“hows” and “whys” of your customer base and not
just the “whats.”
Social media sentiment can be especially useful to
track during a PR crisis. By comprehensively
monitoring and efficiently responding to issues, a
company’s marketing and/or customer service team
can actually sway consumer sentiment from
negative to neutral…and ideally to positive.

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What & How Share of Voice
Much to Measure
PRDaily defines “Share Of Voice (SOV)” as “the percentage of
all online content and conversations about your company,
compared against those of your competitors.”
SOV = your brand advertising / total market advertising.
SOV provides some key insights for social media. First, it can be
an indicator of campaign effectiveness: What are customer
responses to your social efforts? Is your campaign being well-
received? Are people interested in your content, or is it
lacking traction in your audience?
Next, Share Of Voice may demonstrate levels of brand
awareness: Are customers talking about your brand without any
prompts such as campaigns or incentives?
Finally, SOV is useful for competitive comparisons: If your
competition has a greater SOV, why is that? What products do
they have and how are they being positioned? Why might
customers be responding better to them instead of you?
Review your SOV with this helpful Share of Voice Worksheet.

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What & How Reach
Much to Measure
Reach is a social media metric that tells how many unique
individuals saw your post. But more accurately, reach
conveys how many individuals potentially saw your post. This
means that, while being a common KPI, reach is really an
estimate, not a definitive metric.
Reach is often frequently confused with impressions, but they
are two different measurements altogether.
Impressions are the number of times that a piece of
content is displayed in a social feed, but reach is the
number of people who saw that content, regardless of
number of times it was displayed. Reach will almost always
be a smaller number than impressions. If that doesn’t make
sense, think of it this way:
If your social feed displays a post from your boss about a
new restaurant, and then your feed displays the same post
again but this time from your spouse, that would count as two
impressions (one from your boss plus one from your spouse).
But it was just your newsfeed who received both posts, so the
post’s reach was one (the one and only you).

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What & How Clicks & Conversions
Much to Measure The ultimate goal of social media is not just to be social for
social’s sake—it’s to reach business goals, such as
awareness, lead generation and sales.
With this in mind, it’s important to build a framework for
tracking the flow of the customer purchase journey. Most
social media platforms offer some form of basic traffic
reporting, but to link those numbers out from social and
into conversions requires additional work on the analytics
side.
Many companies use Google Analytics to gain insight into
marketing efforts that drive potential customers to a brand web
site. Google’s free Campaign URL Builder tool lets you
quickly add parameters to a URL for social media tracking
purposes.
By installing URL parameters, Google Analytics can illustrate
where website traffic is coming from (for example, a particular
post on a particular social channel) and whether that lead led
to additional website exploration and conversion activity like an
email signup or a white paper download.

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What & How Social & Content Marketing Attribution
Much to Measure Marketers are increasingly asked, or required, to justify
social marketing efforts as well as content development
and deployment costs. The challenge is, these efforts
often don’t lead directly to a trackable online or offline
revenue event.
Initial awareness via a social channel and subsequent
content consumption may be the essential top to
middle of funnel experience necessary to “get the
sale.” But how do we prove it? And even if you have
sophisticated tracking in place on all your digital marketing
assets (no one does), which ad, post or piece of content
gets the credit for the sale?
This is where an attribution model, specifically one that
includes assisted attributions, can help illustrate the
effectiveness of indirect selling in contrast to a blatant “buy
now” call to action.

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What & How Social & Content Marketing Attribution
Much to Measure The Good Old Days - Direct Attribution to Ad Spend
Awareness Engagement Conversion

Prospect Views Visits Conversion

PPC Ad Landing Page and ROAS

A Modern Example
Awareness Awareness Engagement Content Engagement Content Conversion
Consumed Consumed

Prospect Views Later Views Visits Landing Views a Revisits Site Downloads Signs Up
Social Post Retargeting Ad Page Demo Video Later Free eBook for Newsletter

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24
 The 3 Types of

Social Media Metrics
“However beautiful the strategy,

you should occasionally look at the results.”
—Winston Churchill

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The Metrics Who Needs Numbers?
Imperative
While many people in a company could potentially benefit
from a more complete picture drawn from business analytics,
there are three marketing constituents who most need access
to social media metrics and outcomes.
These individuals are:

Practitioners Managers Executives

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The Metrics Why Do Practitioners Need Metrics?
Imperative Practitioners are the individuals granted authority—and a certain
level of autonomy—to work with social media on behalf of a business
to represent its brand, product(s) and/or service(s). They utilize a
variety of skills in their day-to-day roles; most commonly, they are
content creators, community managers and customer service
members.
Because these individuals directly contribute to the front-line
contact a customer has with your brand, it is particularly
important to support them by providing data and analysis on
how they can correct, improve and enhance their work.
Writers and designers need to understand if the content they are
creating is garnering any social response (and if so, of what nature
and why).
Community managers need to monitor audience growth and
engagement, shifts in social platform usage and trends in brand
mentions (in the event of a potential PR crisis, for instance).
Customer service representatives need to know if they are
responding in a timely manner, resolving issues and providing a good
customer experience.

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The Metrics What Should Practitioners Measure?
Imperative
As part of their ongoing responsibilities, practitioners
should track and measure these metrics per post, and
aggregated per channel:
# of followers, fans, subscribers.
# of likes, comments, shares, mentions, saves.
# of shares, retweets, repins, regrams.
# of clicks, page visits.
# of brand replies, direct messages, emails responded to.
# of downloads, leads, sales.
# of positive, neutral and negative sentiments received..
3-5 best performing posts per week/month.

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The Metrics Metrics Reporting for Practitioners
Imperative
On the front line of social media creation and performance, practitioners
need to be able to review data points often in order to course-correct in small
nudges as necessary. We suggest practitioners create sheets along the
following format:
Frequency: Weekly

F 3 Focus: Behavior
This report should reflect what actually occurred over the previous
week. How well did the social media content perform? Is your
audience growing or shrinking? What (and how many) actions did
your customers take that validate the efficacy of your campaigns?
Format: Excel
A spreadsheet is essential for calculating if deltas are trending
upward or down and goals are being met or missed.

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The Metrics Why Do Managers Need Metrics?
Imperative
Marketing managers can use social media metrics for
several purposes.
One of the most important reasons for reviewing social
and web analytics data is to determine the direction of
content strategy. If the present content isn’t resonating
with an audience (as indicated by a lack of social response
or site traffic), a manager may choose to experiment with
variations of copy, imagery and placement in order to better
align the brand message.
Social media analytics can also inform whether managers
might need to expand their teams. During a particularly
effective campaign or an unfortunate public relations
occasion, for example, a considerable increase in social
media mentions and engagement may necessitate adding
more staff, recruiting new skills and extending business
operation hours.

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The Metrics What Should Managers Measure?
Imperative
Marketing managers should review their
community managers’ metrics reports but also
collate the following data in order to make
recommendations for content/site optimization
and budget:

$
‣ CPC (cost per click).
‣ CPA (cost per acquisition).
‣ CPM (cost per thousand impressions).
‣ Average time spent on page.
‣ Average number of pages visited.
‣ Referral traffic sources.

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The Metrics Metrics Reporting for Managers
Imperative
The second level of social media metrics takes the previous
detailed metrics and coalesces them into bigger picture insights.
We suggest managers create sheets along the following format:
Frequency: Monthly

F 3
Focus: Comparison
This report should review what was accomplished this
month compared to last, as well as call out any areas
where managers may need to provide extra guidance or
support for the team.
Format: Excel or PowerPoint
Excel’s or PowerPoint’s graphing capabilities are perfect
for showing comparison data points via line, bar or pie
charts.

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The Metrics Why Do Executives Need Metrics?
Imperative
At the top of the pyramid, executives like Chief Marketing
Officers (CMOs) are responsible for setting the course for future
business development.
For instance, social media metrics can show if new audiences are
developing or existing audiences are changing. Demographics, such
as age and location, or the rise of a new social media platform, can
help a CMO plot a brand strategy to stay connected with a targeted
audience.
In addition, tracking customer usage, preferences and input can aid in
identifying marketing trends and predicting new product opportunities.
Taking these into consideration helps CMOs determine marketing
budgets and develop overarching marketing strategy.

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The Metrics What Should Executives Measure?
Imperative
Gathering all metrics from community managers
and business managers will help executive-level
administration guide company strategy and
direction. They should consider:
‣ Demand generation – Is brand awareness and interest
growing due to social media efforts?
‣ Lead generation – Is marketing funneling prospective
customers into the company?
‣ Resources – Is time, money and people being spent in
the right places?
‣ Sales cycle – How much time does it take from lead to
close?
‣ Velocity – How many deals per rep per month are
occurring and is this number increasing or decreasing?
Why?

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The Metrics Metrics Reporting for Executives
Imperative At the top level, social media metrics should provide an
unambiguous, yet concise, overview for the executives who will use
it to determine business strategy. We suggest executives create
sheets along the following format:
Frequency: Monthly or Quarterly

F 3
Focus:
1. Trends – Show what’s happening directionally with your
KPIs; are there lifts or dips that need to be addressed?
2. Changes – Highlight the things you are doing differently
now from the previous.
3. Resources – Confirm whether the team’s structure and
actions are contributing to company-level outcomes; are
current staffing and budgets sufficient or do they require
adjustment?
Format: One Page
Most C-level administrators need to ingest information
quickly, so curb this report’s length to a single sheet document
(for instance, as one Microsoft Word page, Excel tab, or
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PowerPoint slide).
MEDIA METRICS
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 How & Why to
Market Metrics
“If you can’t explain it simply,
you don’t understand it well enough.”
—Albert Einstein

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What & How Merchandising Metrics
Much to Measure Beyond Marketing
Besides the marketing team, think about how social
media results could impact or be utilized by other
departments in your organization.
Human resources team members are finding that social
media is a tremendous tool for job recruitment. Social
keyword research and website analytics can improve SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) on job listings, which means
greater visibility and reach for new candidates.
Product development may find new inspiration through
social media trends or solicit product feedback via
crowdsourced input. As an example, Starbucks found great
success and built a stronger community with their My
Starbucks Idea campaign.
Even the company legal team may find social media
analytics useful. By monitoring for brand keywords and
product names, copyright infringements can be caught
more quickly and cease and desist notices sent to
offenders.
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What & How How to Merchandise Data
Much to Measure in Your Company
Now that your business has defined social media goals and
KPIs, and collected and analyzed the numbers, why and how can
you share the end results with your team? Here are some ideas:
‣ Boost customer confidence by sharing happy customer experiences as
testimonials on your blog.
‣ Improve team morale by sharing positive sentiments addressed to a
named individual or group–make the occasion even more special by
printing out and hand-delivering the compliment.
‣ Incentivize sales by emailing weekly or monthly reports on leads and
closures fueled by social media campaigns.
‣ Onboard new employees or update existing ones through short-form
videos that can be repurposed as social media content. For example,
consider implementing a “webinine” (webinars that last nine minutes or
less) to broadcast news and tips to your team.
‣ Sharing the results of social media efforts company-wide can create
new connections between departments, uncover new content, product
or process opportunities and foster a stronger sense of collaborative
accomplishment.
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 Conclusion
“Develop success from failures.
Discouragement and failure are two of the
surest stepping stones to success.”
—Dale Carnegie

39
Appendix
“The goal is to transform
data into information and
information into insight.”
—Carly Fiorina, Former CEO, HP
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Data-Driven Social Media Marketers Win
In an increasingly competitive market, it’s essential
for businesses to use the best tools and processes
available. By first defining clear goals, then implementing
achievable KPIs, and finally collecting and analyzing
social media data, marketers can establish the solid
frameworks needed to continuously—and successfully—
push the needles forward on their business.
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now@convinceandconvert.com
602.616.1895
www.convinceandconvert.com