Mastering the Social Media Metrics that Matter

The importance of key metrics in social media

You’ve figured out your content, niche, and audience–what’s the next big thing?

An analytical approach to your content is the key to understanding what works. TikTok Studio and Instagram Insights, for example, are free, built-in tools that compile your metrics and present your performance in easy-to-digest charts and numbers.

Tracking key metrics helps you improve your engagement rate, cook up engaging content strategies, and drive better results. All you need to do is understand how to use them to unlock your growth.

Understanding your engagement metrics

You should be all too familiar with the basic metrics to track your engagement: likes, comments, views, shares, and saves. These are the foundation of your content analytics, and they provide a surface-level understanding of what your audience wants to see and interact with.

The benchmark for a good engagement rate (ER) differs on every platform, and it also depends on factors such as your niche and follower count. For nano-level creators, the average ER on Instagram is 4.8%, and on TikTok it’s 4%. Check out the formula below to see where you’re at.

Bringing your skills to the table will ensure your brand. Sharing unique, unknown knowledge can improve your credibility in your niche. Consistent content topics also help establish your brand, which is where content pillars come in. These are the core themes that shape and guide your content.

Engagement Rate Formula

Average ER = Likes + Comments + Shares / Total Followers x 100

Getting to know your audience

Understanding your audience is the key to sustaining your growth as a creator. By tracking their age, gender, location, and active times, you can create improved, tailored content that resonates.

TikTok Studio offers behavioural data on your audience–like other posts your viewers also viewed, and other creators they watched. You can use this data to find out whether you’ve successfully tapped into the right audience.

With these data on your audience’s demographics and behaviour, try experimenting with different posting times or testing new content topics.

Unlocking content value and longevity

Engagement metrics like saves and shares can show how much your audience values your content, and it also helps in indicating content shelf-life. They shouldn’t always be considered as vanity metrics as they’re effective indicators of your content value and longevity.

When your audience saves your content, they see it as valuable enough to revisit in the future, which also improves longevity. Share metrics indicate that your content resonates enough with the audiences to compel them to forward it to others–organically expanding your reach.

Instagram Insights provides a comprehensive analysis of your engagement metrics, including saves and shares. You can also find the number of saves you have on every post via Analytics in TikTok Studio.

Looking into follower growth

Follower growth can be more than a vanity metric–if you know how to use the data effectively. Tracking it is valuable in understanding how you can further expand your audience.

You can calculate your growth rate within a certain time period by using the formula below. The data alone can’t answer a lot of questions–but you can compare it against your content topics and strategy. For example: you’ve been posting a signature series for the last 3 months–what does your follower growth rate look like in that time period?

Follower Growth Rate Formula

Followers gained in a time period / number of followers prior to the time period x 100

Utilising actionable metrics

Tracking key metrics allows you to speed up your growth as a creator. The numbers might seem overwhelming at first–but understanding analytics allows you to better understand your content strategy and your audiences.