11 Social Media Metrics to Track to Improve Your Conversions in 2024

Failure to track metrics can lead to several impactful problems, such as:

• Wasted marketing budget 

• Low conversion rate

• Reduced market share

Tracking metrics for the sake of it is a great way to become overworked, but does little to improve the most critical metric in your business—conversions. 

In this article, we'll delve into 11 key social media metrics essential to improve your conversion rates and return on ad spend (ROAS). 

What are social media metrics?

Social media metrics tell you if your social media campaign is achieving its goals. They measure your social media performance—such as engagement rate (comments, likes, and shares), reach, click-through rate, and follower growth—and whether your social media strategy is working. 

Various social media analytics tools exist to measure these metrics, often with benchmarks based on your industry to help you determine if your social media posts are performing as well as they could be. 

These social media analytics tools provide an immense quantity of data, such as user demographics (age, gender, location), website traffic data, click-through rate, and bounce rate. The data opens the door to several choices, such as whether to edit your home page, social media copy, graphics, or targeting. 

Because it's possible to track so many types of social media metrics, it’s easy to fall into the trap of tracking too much. 

Determining the most important social media metrics for your business depends on:

• The specific social media channel: For example, engagement may be less important on LinkedIn than on Facebook.

• The primary conversion goal of your digital marketing strategy: For example, a sales campaign may use different targeting and social media copy than a traffic campaign.

All marketing campaigns ideally should result in a return on investment (ROI). It’s challenging to correlate ROI with your social media activity in some social media campaigns, such as brand awareness campaigns. 

Why? Because brand awareness campaigns typically lack a direct CTA that leads to an immediate purchase and instead focus on long-term gains, such as brand recognition and audience building.

However, tracking social media ROI for every type of campaign isn’t impossible. It might simply require more sophisticated analytics tracking, and sufficient data points. For example, you can add highly specific UTM tags to lead generation books from different campaigns. The book doesn't change, but you can change the UTM tags in the links inside the book. Over time, you can connect conversions to specific campaigns, no matter how much time elapses after the initial campaign. 

"UTM" stands for Urchin Tracking Module, the analytics solution that later became Google Analytics. "UTM Tags" refers to special parameters you add to a URL to provide further information for your analytics solution. UTM tags are now widely used across analytics solutions, not only Google Analytics. 

The tags specify things, such as the campaign name, medium, and source that sent traffic to your website. 

For example, if you write a lead generation book titled "How to Read Social Media Metrics," you could add the following UTM tags to a link in the book:

• Campaign: social-media-metrics-campaign

• Medium: ebook

• Source: how-to-read-social-media-metrics-ebook

Your final link would look like this: 

https://example.com/?utm_source=how-to-read-social-media-metrics-ebook&utm_medium=ebook&utm_campaign=social-media-metrics-campaign

If you published a second book as part of the same campaign, you'd change the "source" tag for links in that book to tell your analytics software that the click came from the second book. 

For newsletters that are part of the campaign, you'd change the medium to email and the source to the name of that newsletter issue. 

More UTM tags exist to provide detailed insight into traffic sources, and you can use this tool to add them to your landing page URLs or earn more about each. 

You can also integrate website interaction metrics with your CRM, giving you a long-term view of how that lead or prospect moved through your funnel.

You can further draw correlations between increased brand mentions and conversions by using social listening tools, such as Sprout Social or BuzzSumo.

If you need help setting up a sophisticated system for tracking social media metrics and connecting them back to ROI, consider buying data analytics services from Fiverr freelancers to help you. 

Social media metrics aren't created equal

Some social media metrics are universal, such as engagement rate and follower growth, while others relate specifically to the social platform you’re marketing in. For instance, LinkedIn offers connections, which isn't the same as Facebook friends. And X (formerly Twitter) only has followers. On LinkedIn, tracking connections is more important than tracking followers, whereas you can only track followers on X (Twitter). 

“The most important social media metrics to track vary between platforms. However, reach and engagement metrics provide valuable insight into how your content is performing regardless of the platform,” says Amelia Munday, co-founder and marketing specialist at Custom Neon. “The more people who engage with your content, the more the algorithm pushes your content to new users.”

In a brand awareness campaign, shares and likes—aka engagement—may be more valuable than click-through rate (CTR). The reason: brand awareness campaigns typically don't contain aggressive CTAs relating directly to conversions, such as a purchase or email signup.

However, the followers metric might not be as significant on newer platforms like TikTok as on other platforms, cautions Munday. “Most TikTok users will engage with content in their ‘for you’ page instead of their ‘following’ page.” Tracking follower growth on TikTok is not as important as tracking engagement, because of how TikTok works compared to other platforms. 

In a Facebook sales campaign, chasing video views instead of leads might produce impressive vanity metrics but will likely do little to improve your conversion rate. 

Vanity metrics look impressive on a graph but have little relation to real-world return. For example, a random humorous cat gif that doesn't lead to an actionable CTA may garner thousands of likes on X (formerly Twitter). But it's unlikely to do anything to improve your sales. In this case, the "Likes" would be a vanity metric. 

11 social media metrics to track 

Because the importance of a particular metric depends on the platform, audience, and campaign goals, we’ve listed these social media metrics in no particular order. 

1. Engagement rate

Engagement rate measures how many people engaged with your content, divided by the size of your audience. 

Let's imagine your Facebook page has 100,000 followers, and your posts got 10,000 likes last week. 

10,000 / 100,000 = 0.1

Your engagement rate is 0.1, or 10%. 

Why it matters for conversions: 

Engagement can lead indirectly to conversions. A view of a social media post can lead to a like and comment. Replying to comments can encourage people to subscribe to your feed, leading to more frequent views of posts and finally resulting in a purchase or email subscription. 

How to improve engagement rate:

One way to improve your engagement rate is to understand your audience so thoroughly that you create content that resonates with them. You can do this through surveys, but the best way is to engage with them personally on social media. 

It’s impossible to engage with every social media channel daily, but you can buy social media management services from Fiverr freelancers to help you. 

2. Social media referral traffic

This metric measures the number of clicks from social media that lead to your landing page. Social media analytics tools like Google Analytics log this traffic automatically. Still, it’s best to use UTM tags—special tracking tags—in your landing page URLs to create granular social media reports. 

Why it matters for conversions:

Most traditional conversions happen outside the social media platform, so landing page traffic from social media is crucial to improving conversions. 

“The most important metrics to track are comments and clicks, depending on your goals or your client’s goals,” says Lindsey Chastain, founder and CEO of The Writing Detective, a content marketing company based in Oklahoma. “These metrics more accurately show how effective your posts are at interacting with your audience.”

How to improve it:

Before tackling this metric, make sure your engagement rate is high. Poor engagement rate signals poor social media content, and that’s the first step to improving social media referral traffic. 

If you need help creating excellent social media posts, consider buying social media copy services from Fiverr experts to help you. 

Excellent copy can improve referral traffic. The more compelling your social media content is, the more likely people are to click the link in a post and visit your landing page. 

Once they get to the landing page, keep an eye out for bounce rate—the ratio of people who land on a page, take no further action, then leave. To improve bounce rate, you must design a high-converting landing page that's relevant to their desires and pain points. 

3. Number of followers

The number of followers metric measures how many followers your social media account has. 

Why it matters for conversions:

The more followers you have, the more eyes land on your content when you publish something.

How to improve number of followers:

Some of the actions you can take to improve follower count are:

• Creating excellent content, such as engaging videos, powerful graphics, and social media copy that speaks to people's desires and pain points.

• Running giveaways that require people to follow your social media accounts to enter. 

• Providing a link in your email campaigns to get people to follow you on social media. 

• Blog?

• Collaborations

• Influencer marketing

But follower count alone can also be misleading, cautions Danish Soomro, founder of Devi, an AI-powered online social media manager. 

Active members might be a more accurate metric.

Soomro manages the company’s 172,000-member Facebook group and says this about keeping members active: “From my experience with Facebook groups, comments and active members are critical when using an online community for marketing.Comments come from active members. Whenever our numbers are down, the team generates content to drive engagement and keep the community alive.”

Soomro further recommends keeping an eye on your audience demographics. A high follower count that doesn’t match your product’s target audience is unlikely to significantly improve conversion or engagement rates. 

Managing a community takes a lot of work, and you can buy community management services from expert Fiverr freelancers to take the load off. 

4. Audience growth rate

Audience growth rate measures the rate at which you get new followers.

Why it matters for conversions:

The faster you grow, the quicker you get more eyes on your content. A conversion rate of 1% in an audience of 1,000 people is 10 conversions. In an audience of 10,000, it’s 100. 

The higher your audience growth rate, the more people you can reach to convert them into customers. 

How to improve it:

To increase your audience growth rate, post great content frequently. 

This can be overwhelming if you operate on multiple social media platforms. Consider using  social media strategy services from Fiverr freelancers to create a social media calendar and schedule content ready in advance. 

5. Cost-per-click (CPC)

CPC refers to the average price you pay per click in paid social media campaigns. 

If your social media ad receives 100 clicks and you paid $100 in total for those clicks, then your CPC is $1. 

Why it matters for conversions:

Small businesses on tight budgets must monitor CPC closely to remain profitable. A high CPC in itself isn't necessarily bad. If your campaign is well-targeted and those clicks result in high-quality traffic and conversions, your return on ad spend will pay for the high cost of clicks. 

To ensure sustainable success, you should consider social media metrics holistically, determining the relative value of one metric as modified by another. For example, you should always look at your CPC versus your total sales from ads. If your sales are higher than your ad spend, the value of CPC isn't significant. 

Similarly, consider your customer lifetime value (CLV). In some business models, the full CLV only becomes apparent months or years later, such as in subscription models or inventory-based companies. In this case, comparing your ad spend with customer revenue over a year portrays a more accurate picture of whether you're overspending on ads. 

Need help determining what combination of metrics to monitor to achieve a holistic view of your social media marketing campaigns? Consider buying social media marketing services from Fiverr professionals to help you. 

How to improve it:

The best way to improve CPC is to thoroughly test your creatives. Different types of tests exist, each with its pros and cons. You can run A/B tests, text tests, or ad ranking test:. 

• A/B Tests: Also known as split testing, compares two versions of an ad to see which performs better. You run the ads simultaneously, serving each to 50% of the impressions, then choose which one works best as your primary ad. 

• Text Tests: Only tests the ad copy, excluding images or videos. You run it as an A/B test, then pick the copy from the best ad and develop it further with images or videos. This allows you to hone your copy so the additional images and videos enhance the copy. 

• Ranking Tests: In some ad platforms, the top-ranking ad sometimes leads to the highest conversions. Adjust your bids and pay less for higher returns by testing which ad rank results in the highest conversions. 

An essential part of testing your creatives is to find the creative that gets the best click-through rate for the lowest cost, or the best return from conversions.

Testing your creatives is an extensive subject and worth the investment because it can significantly reduce your long-term ad spend. Consider buying marketing strategy services from Fiverr freelancers to test your creatives thoroughly. 

6. Social share of voice (SSoV)

SSoV tracks the number of times people talk about your brand compared to your competitors.

The formula is:

(Your total brand mentions) ÷ (Your total brand mentions + Your competitors’ total brand mentions)

For example, if your brand was mentioned 100 times and your competitors were mentioned 300 times, the SSoV would be 100 ÷ (100 + 300) = 25%.

This metric typically requires social media analytics tools to measure accurately, especially across platforms. 

Why it matters for conversions:

If you compete directly with specific brands, SSoV can significantly impact conversion rates. Unless your product significantly differs from a competitor’s, SSoV alone may be the primary determining factor in your conversion rate compared to your competitor's. 

Higher SSoV indicates greater brand visibility and discussion, often leading to increased consumer trust and preference, which directly influences the decision to choose your product over a competitor's.

How to improve it:

Even if your product differs significantly from your competitor’s, your target audience might not know it. To address this, create a powerful marketing campaign with compelling graphics and CTAs to educate them. 

Another option: engage a nano influencer (1K - 10K followers) or micro influencer (10K - 50K followers) to discuss your product. You can buy influencer marketing services from Fiverr freelancers to promote your channel or products. 

7. Click-through rate (CTR)

Click-through rate refers to the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions your post received. 

An impression is how many times someone saw your post in their feed. 

CTR is often used in paid social media campaigns. 

The formula for CTR is:

CTR = number of clicks ÷ Number of Impressions

So, if you received 100 clicks for a post that received 10,000 impressions, the CTR would be:

100 / 10,000 = 0.01 (1%)

Why it matters for conversions:

A click leading to your landing page is the first step into your sales funnel. To get conversions, you need clicks to your landing page. 

How to improve it:

To improve CTR, you can:

• Create better social media copy with clear CTAs and compelling language 

• Improve the quality of your social media graphics or videos 

• Carry out A/B testing to see which creatives get better CTR 

8. Video views

The definition of video views depends on the social media platform. On some platforms, as little as three seconds can be considered a video view. 

Here's a quick summary of what counts as a video view on each platform:

• YouTube: 30 seconds. 

• Facebook: Three seconds.

• Instagram: Three seconds.

• LinkedIn: Three seconds.

• Snapchat: Two seconds, or swiping up on the top snap.

• X (formerly Twitter): Two seconds.

• Instagram: Three seconds.

• TikTok: The instant your video starts playing, which might account for inflated "video views" on the platform. TikTok also offers metrics for 2-second and 6-second video views. 

Other rules exist that modify or augment the above numbers, so check each platform's definition to understand how your video views are performing. 

Why it matters for conversions:

Poor performance typically signifies a weak opening or low-quality thumbnail in your videos. 

If your video views are high, but your video completion rate is low, some quality issue likely exists after the "video view" time period that turns people away. The video may be poorly scripted, have poor sound, or is too long. 

However, if your video views are low, you likely need a compelling thumbnail or opening sequence. Focus there before tackling the video completion rate. 

Improving video views is the first step in getting people to watch your video to the end and then take the action that results in a conversion. 

Creating high-converting videos requires immense skill, and you can buy social media video services from Fiverr freelancers to help you make excellent videos. 

How to improve it:

The thumbnail and opening sequence of a video are essential to capture attention. Ensure that these are well-designed and that any text contains the right hook to get people to watch the rest of the video. 

For instance, a weak hook in the text may be vague and generic, like "Watch This Video," failing to spark curiosity. In contrast, a strong hook could be specific and intriguing, such as "5 Revolutionary Tips to Transform Your Cooking Overnight," immediately drawing viewers in. 

9. Video completion rate

Video completion rate refers to the ratio of people who complete watching an entire video divided by the number of impressions the video had. 

If a video appeared 1,000 times in a social media feed and 10 people watched it, then the video completion rate is 1%. 

The formula is:

Number of complete video views ÷ number of video impressions

Why it matters for conversions: 

Videos are a powerful conversion medium. The more people who watch your video to the end, the more chances you have of them following your video’s CTA and converting.

How to improve it:

To improve your video completion rate, you need:

• An eye-catching video thumbnail with a hook 

• A tight script that gives the watcher precisely the info they need

• Professional video editing to put all the pieces together, often including background music or sound effects 

10. Average response time

Average response time measures how fast you respond to customer queries, which can profoundly affect conversion rates. 

Why it matters for conversions:

A poor response rate, particularly for urgent queries, can lead to customers complaining on social media about your brand. 

Brand perception is a key revenue driver, and maintaining a fast response time and a courteous attitude is crucial to ensuring your brand mentions are positive. 

How to improve it:

Not everyone can have a support team on call to answer customer queries. If you sell online internationally, you additionally have to deal with different time zones, potentially keeping customers waiting unnecessarily. 

Ecommerce AI chatbots field many of the most common customer questions, leaving customers satisfied without speaking with a customer service rep. 

You can also buy virtual assistant services from Fiverr freelancers to monitor your channels when you’re unavailable. 

11. Net promoter score (NPS)

Net promoter score measures your customers’ loyalty to your brand. It relates to response time, response rate, and overall customer satisfaction. 

You measure NPS based on customer answers to only a single question:

How likely will you recommend [brand/product/service] to a friend?

Customers answer the question on a scale of 1-10. Anyone answering with 6 or less is considered a Detractor. Anyone answering with 9 or above is regarded as a Promoter. 

To calculate NPS, we use the following formula:

NPS = (Number of promoters - number of detractors) ÷ number of respondents

Then, you multiply the answer by 100.

Anyone who answers with a 7 or 8 isn't included in the calculation.

Why it matters for conversions:

NPS measures both the potential for future sales and overall customer satisfaction. Word of mouth is a powerful sales driver, and satisfied customers directly impact sales from friends they promote to. Satisfied customers also mean a longer lifetime customer value (LCV). 

How to improve it:

Improving customer care often requires investment in improving workflows and touchpoints. You have to do more than merely ensure your product is excellent, but also ensure:

• Your ecommerce store is working properly 

• Shipping occurs on time 

• Customer queries are handled 

• Email marketing respects privacy 

• And countless other factors relating to day-to-day business.

Another critical aspect of improving NPS is monitoring brand mentions in real time. Several social media monitoring tools exist that let you do this. By monitoring brand mentions, you can quickly act when customers comment negatively on social media. 

How to decide which social media metrics are most important

Skylar Greene, CEO and brand strategist at Oasis Branding provides tips on determining the most important social media marketing metrics based on your goals. 

She recommends starting with your KPIs, or key performance indicators, which determine the overall effectiveness of your social media efforts. 

“When deciding on your KPIs, you must understand that there’s a division of types of metrics,” explains Greene. “They fall under engagement, awareness, marketing, and customer service metrics.”

To grow a community, Greene recommends focusing on engagement rate and awareness metrics, such as video views and reach—the number of people who see your content.

Greene switches to traditional marketing metrics, such as click-through and conversion rates when focusing on sales. “Customer service metrics are also important when you’re after generating sales,” she says. 

The overall goal and KPI should determine what key metrics you should focus on for that campaign or period of time. 

Buy social media strategy services from Fiverr freelancers

A lot of knowledge and resources are necessary to prepare and execute a successful social strategy. Monitoring social media metrics is just a tiny part of it. You also need an understanding of the different social platforms, what types of content work best on them, and a grasp of which metrics work for each platform. 

There’s no such thing as a “template strategy” that works across all social platforms. Your LinkedIn social strategy will likely be quite different from your TikTok strategy. It requires an expert at both platforms to determine the most efficient strategy. 

You can find the help you need for an excellent social strategy from Fiverr’s ranks of expert freelancers. 

Fiverr is a marketplace of experienced freelancers specialized in every area of digital marketing, social media management, and social media strategies. On Fiverr, you can find people to help you across the entire workflow of executing a successful social strategy, from preparing content to analyzing its results. 

If you’d like to buy social media management services from Fiverr, open an account today.