What are social media KPIs?

Social media KPIs are key performance indicators used to determine whether an organization or a department within an organization is making progress towards meeting particular social media goals. These goals may include increasing their number of followers on social networks, attracting more traffic to a website, or generating leads.

How do you calculate your ROI on social media?

In order to calculate your ROI, or return on investment, for social media efforts, you generally begin by assigning monetary values to your social media KPIs while keeping track of your spending on social media for specific campaigns. You subtract the cost of your investment in a social media campaign from the associated revenue or value (as estimated using your social KPIs) obtained from your investment and then divide the result by the cost of your investment.

How do you measure the effectiveness of social media?

To measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts, you can start by identifying relevant social media KPIs that reflect your definition of success for a specific campaign. You can then use social listening tools to track your KPIs, calculate the ROI of your social media campaign, and determine the quantitative impact of your efforts for a specific time period or project.

Social Media KPIs

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are used by firms to coordinate and evaluate efforts towards achieving certain business objectives or goals. Social media KPIs are used to guide and measure the progress of efforts made by companies to meet specific social media goals. In short, they help companies assess the performance of social media campaigns. By tracking social media KPIs, firms can better understand how well their investments in social media are translating into quantifiable business results.

Through the use of a social media KPI dashboard, which displays select KPIs relevant for various stakeholders in an organization, firms can leverage the power of a social media analytics program to uncover actionable insights from their social media data.

Extracting meaningful insights from social data using social media KPIs

Firms today have access to a wealth of social media data but sifting through all of it and finding the information that truly matters isn’t easy. Social media KPIs help firms filter and organize the data, and are useful for different teams across the enterprise. Department-specific KPIs enable organizations to direct and streamline the social data gathering and reporting process, ensuring that each department or team receives the data most relevant for their areas of interest and objectives.

Social media KPIs help firms:

Track, measure, and rank brand health on social channels
Assess the effectiveness of social media messaging and content
Analyze and optimize social media campaign performance
Calculate and demonstrate social media ROI
Compare their brand’s online presence with that of competitors

Choosing the best social media KPIs for your particular needs

Social media KPIs are generally defined around three key focus areas: brand awareness, engagement, and lead generation/conversion. Examples of basic social KPIs include Impressions and Reach, which measure brand awareness, Total Number of Interactions (likes, shares, etc.), which represent forms of engagement, Click-Through Rate, and Conversions. Many social networking and video sharing services have their own platform-specific KPIs such as Number of Fans (Facebook), Top 5 Tweets by Engagement (Twitter), and Watch Time (YouTube).

The social media KPIs your organization, or departments within your organization, chooses to use will depend on your channels, project goals, and business objectives. For each department and project, your teams will need to define what their specific goals are, such as increasing brand awareness or generating new leads and then define social KPIs accordingly.

Social media KPIs from the leader in social listening

Here are three highly useful social KPIs that Synthesio, makers of the leading social media intelligence suite, employs:

Share of Voice (SOV): Shows you how often your brand is being discussed around a specific topic as compared to your competitors. Essential for evaluating the effectiveness of online PR and marketing efforts.
Share of Engagement (SOE): Shows you how much audiences are interacting with your content or the percentage of interactions in a data set compared to a whole. Essential for analyzing and optimizing campaign performance.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Shows you how attached or loyal consumers are to your brand. Essential for both online reputation management and competitor benchmarking.

Tracking the social media KPIs most important to your brand with Synthesio Beam

For executives and other stakeholders in your organization that want a bird’s eye view of your brand’s performance and impact on social media channels, Synthesio Beam, just one component of Synthesio’s comprehensive social media listening toolset, can provide just that.

Beam is a highly-customizable social media command center that surfaces and visualizes the social media KPIs most relevant to your brand. Our multi-screen display shows you the mentions of your brand pulled from multiple social channels, your brand’s changing Social Reputation Score—a measure of overall consumer sentiment around your brand—and other brand health metrics in real-time. With Beam, your teams can keep a vigilant eye on your brand’s presence and impact on social channels using real-time KPI dashboards. Get the latest feedback from online consumers to gauge the performance of and tweak live social media campaigns.