The 12 Most Important Social Media KPIs for Your Marketing Team

Social media marketing is a valuable part of your company's marketing mix. However, it is often challenging to understand or compare the effectiveness of different activities on social networks. What role does social media KPIs play at this point?

Social media KPIs (KPIs - Key Performance Indicators) should help you and your marketing team to keep an overview of the effects of your strategic and operational social media marketing and to carry out a meaningful social media analysis.

In recent years, many KPIs have been established as social media analysis tools in the various channels, which can sometimes be confusing at first glance because, for example, they use different terms for the same or similar parameters.

As a social media manager, you should know the following 12 social media KPIs to make valid statements about the success of your online marketing activities.

1. Followers

The Follower KPI(Key Performance Indicators) is one of the most established and oldest parameters. Depending on the network, the number of subscribers, fans, or followers is recorded underneath.

The number of followers of an account significantly influences its reach because an account with few followers tends to achieve a lower reach than an account with many followers.

2. Reach and Impressions

As a social media manager, the reach gives you valuable information about how many people have seen your posts or advertisements. Reach plays an important role in establishing brand awareness for your business.

The reach counts the number of individual social media accounts reached. Impressions represent the total number of accounts reached. In this context, the number of impressions must always be higher than the reach.

For example, posts that can be called up several times from one account and should be taken into account in a correct social media analysis play a role here.

3. Engagement Rate (ER)

Interactions are initially user activities, such as video views, likes, shares or comments, etc. The ER is calculated using the following engagement KPI social media formula: (number of engagements ÷ number of fans and followers) x 100.

The engagement KPI in social media means in practice: If you record 80 engagements, for example, with 2000 followers, the engagement rate is 4%.

4. Conversion Rate (CR)

Among the social media KPIs, the conversion rate describes the actual conversion from a click to a conversion, such as a purchase, download, email subscription, and other actions.

The conversion rate, as one of the social media analysis tools, makes it particularly clear whether predetermined goals have been achieved with the activities carried out.

5. Share of Voice (SSoV)

The Share of Voice key figure gives you information about your company's visibility compared to your competitors. One variant, for example, is the frequency of social media mentions.

This KPI is determined as a percentage and is calculated as follows: (sum of own mentions ÷ sum of all relevant mentions of all competitors) x 100.

6. Virality rate

The virality rate tells you how many users have shared your post concerning the number of unique views (impressions). It's not just about mere likes but the actual virality of your posts.

You calculate the virality rate as the sum of the shares ÷ number of impressions) x 100.

7. CLICK-THROUGH RATE (CTR)

The click-through rate shows the clicks on an advertisement about the total reach. If the CTR is very low, it is important to check whether the target group is also being addressed with relevant text, imagery, and a call to action.

You calculate the CTR: (clicks ÷ reach) x 100.

8. Cost Per Click (CPC)

The social media KPIs also include the costs per click. This gives you a concrete number of how much a single click on an advertisement (ads) costs you.

You determine the CPC from advertising costs ÷ clicks.

9. Cost per Lead (CPL)

The cost per lead shows how much money you have invested in your ads per lead. They make it clear which advertisements work particularly well or which need optimization. This gives you the opportunity to compare the effectiveness of different ads with each other.

10. Thousand Contact Price or Cost per Mille (TKP / CPM)

You can use the CPM or cost per mile to find out how expensive an advertisement is for you to reach 1000 unique users.

It is one of the valuable social media KPIs related to paid advertisements in social networks. With the help of comparison on different platforms, you can easily find where you can reach the most users with the lowest costs.

Calculate the CPM using the following formula: (ad price ÷ reach) x 1,000.

11. Video Views

Video content provision plays an increasingly important role in social networks. For this reason, the associated key figure is particularly interesting for a comprehensive evaluation.

In this context, it is good to know that the different platforms count video views differently. For example, a video is seen on Facebook if it has been running for at least two seconds.

12. Social Media ROI (Return on Investment)

The social media return on investment is also one of the most meaningful social media KPIs. This parameter shows you and your marketing team exactly where you currently stand and what expenses are necessary to implement social media marketing campaigns successfully.

The social media ROI clarifies the return on the time, money, personnel, and other resources spent in the respective channels.

The social media ROI consists of: (total profit - total investment) ÷ total investment.

Sustainable social media analysis with the right KPIs

In our article, we have summarized the 12 most important social media KPIs for your marketing team. Using the right parameters, you retain control over current and future developments in your social media channels.

The KPIs offer a valuable basis for decision-making and enable access, mentions, reach, and much more to be displayed transparently in numbers. In social media marketing, you are always provided with an overview that can be compared over time and thus optimized.

The best Social media management software lets you link your intranet profile to your social network accounts.