"Why don't you track social media analytics?"
Okay, picture this: You hit post on your beautiful image with your carefully crafted message and your painstakingly selected key words and hashtags and blah, blah, blah… and crickets.
What starts going through your head?
What I posted must not be interesting enough, relevant enough, eye-catching enough for people to stop and pay attention.
I’m not interesting.
I’m an imposter.
No one likes me, OMG, what do I do?!
Now, maybe you don’t get quite as worked up about it as I do. I experience something called rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), so the lack of response makes me feel like crap. But even without that, putting that much work into something and getting zero response doesn’t feel great, does it?
On the flip side, getting a ton of likes leaves me flying high.
YAY! I did something right! I’m helping my audience! I’M AMAZING!
But here’s the thing: you can get a hundred likes on a social media post, and… then what?
Social media likes mean nothing unless those people are also clicking through to your offer.
The same thing goes for followers. You could have a gigga followers (that’s my 5-year-old’s word for A LOT – an unimaginable number), and if they’re not clicking through to your offer, they’re not converting. Plain and simple.
These are what we call “vanity metrics” – they might make you feel good (or not), but they don’t actually give you any real information about how your business is performing.
Now, are things like reach and engagement important? Sure. They tell you if your audience is responding to what you’re putting out.
But you don’t just want people to “like” what you’re posting on social media. You want to use social media to build that know-like-trust thing marketers are always talking about so that ultimately they buy something. And you can’t tell if they’re doing that from your reach or engagement (or any other metric you’ll find on a social media analytics/insights dashboard).
How I Choose Which Analytics I Do Track
When it comes to choosing what I track on a regular basis, I’m pretty picky. I don’t want to get stuck hyperfocusing on collecting numbers because that’s freaking easy to do. Collecting numbers into a pretty database feels productive. It takes time, and results in a concrete product.
But I don’t just want to collect numbers (and I don’t want you to just collect numbers either!) – I want to collect the numbers that are actually going to help me run a better business on a day-to-day basis.
So when it comes to social media the only metric I track is traffic to my website.
From that I can tell one super important thing: Are my efforts driving enough traffic so that I’m getting the number of leads I need to reach my sales goals?
If I’m spending a ton of time on one social media platform, and seeing no traffic from that platform to my website, I know something is wrong. And at that point I can go and take a look at my social media metrics to trouble-shoot what’s wrong.
How I Keep Track of What's Working on Social Media
Instead of tracking social media analytics on a regular basis, I do a quick visual review when I notice something is off about my traffic.
At that time I might look at…
- What were my most engaged posts? Most importantly, what got the most clicks? How can I do more of that kind of content?
- If my most engaged posts didn’t get very many clicks, why not? Did I provide a clear call to action? Did I make it easy enough to click?
- What were my worst performing posts? Is there any kind of pattern I can spot (and avoid in the future)?
But these aren’t things that I need to keep track of on a regular basis.
The main thing I need to know on a monthly basis is: am I seeing the traffic I need from this social media platform?
If the answer is yes, YAY, I’m doing something right and I’m going to keep doing it. If the answer is no, I can do a quick scan of my platform to see what I might try to adjust. Without ever tracking my reach or engagement.
This saves me time in tracking every month, and it saves me from falling down the vanity metric rabbit hole.
I hope this makes sense. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below!
Looking for more help with your analytics?
If you want to learn more about how I choose what metrics to track, check out 30-Min Metrics™.
It includes my complete Funnel-to-Goal Framework to help you identify your most important metrics (your KPIs – or key performance indicators – if you want some sexy industry speak) based on the structure of your sales funnel, so you don’t waste time tracking numbers that won’t help you grow your business.
Plus, you get my endlessly customizable 30-Min Metrics™ tracking template, along with a step-by-step video guide on how to make it perfect for your business.
So if you want to make tracking quick and easy, and actually use your numbers to grow your business, grab 30-Min Metrics™ now!
