The difference between “organic social media” and “paid social media” is fairly simple. One is free while the other costs money. Most small businesses like yours have a limited budget and paid ads typically are not a priority. For a business just starting out or new to the social media game, organic social media builds the foundation. And that foundation is built through trust and long-lasting relationships with your target audience.
Remember back to August, where we talked about building a cohesive content strategy for organic social media? Of course! Today it’s time to drill down a bit deeper and explain the metrics you need to know and track.
Organic Social Media Myths Debunked
Millions of people have personal social media accounts. The focus is on followers and not much else. But social media marketing for a business is different. Starting out, business owners typically want to track the following:
- Followers
- New customers
- Revenue
Are these three items important? Yes. Absolutely!
Are these the correct metrics to track for organic growth? Not exactly.
Rome was not built in a day, and neither is your social media audience or your customer base. It takes time to develop a following that likes your content, engages with your posts, and eventually decides to buy from you. Think of organic social media as the tortoise in the fable, “The Tortoise and The Hare”. Slow and steady wins the race every time. As a business new to social media, throwing thousands of dollars out there on paid ads will certainly get you exposure. But they are not right for you just yet. We will tackle that topic another day.
Now that we have cleared that up, let’s get down to brass tacks.
Three Metrics to Track for Long-Term Success
Engagement Rate
This is one of the best metrics to track for organic social media. Simply put, engagement is all about the reaction you receive from your audience, whether they follow you or not. Engagement includes likes, shares, saves, and comments.
Calculating your engagement is fairly easy using a handy graphic developed by HootSuite:
Engagement is a two-way street. If a follower comments on a post, respond back! React to their comment and thank them for their contribution. Other followers will see this and be more likely to respond next time. As you post engaging content regularly, engagement rate should trend upward over time.
Click-through Rate (CTR)
It’s great to have people like your posts. However, the ultimate goal is to get them to learn more about you outside of the post. That action is measured as “click-through rate”. To calculate it, take the number of clicks divided by impressions and multiply that number by 100 to get a percentage:
How do we entice people to learn more about your business? In your social media profiles or inside a post, include links to a lead magnet, home page, or a blog. This is an important metric because it also shows that your content is high-quality. Posting engaging content consistently will lead to higher CTR in the long-term.
Reach
By far the easiest metric to understand is reach, which is the number of people who see your posts. This includes both followers and non-followers. Track reach per post, by campaign, or an average reach of the platform being used. Reach will show the overall growth trend over time. Take note of non-followers who have seen your content. Per Hootsuite, if you have a high number of non-followers, the content is doing well within that platform’s algorithm.
All social media platforms have their own metric dashboards. If you use a social media scheduler like Hootsuite or VistaSocial, you will get an at-a-glance overview of all social media performance.
It’s easy to confuse reach with impressions, but reach is the better metric to track. Impressions include those that have seen your content more than once. This is why impressions metrics are often higher than reach metrics.
Summary
While there are many social media metrics to track, these three metrics are the most important for organic social media. How are your posts performing when you review engagement, click-through rate, and reach? If your business is new to social media or you have been managing the accounts on your own, let’s talk about your numbers. Schedule a call with Cindy at VPS Social and enjoy a morning coffee or afternoon tea to gain more insight!
