There are too many social media metrics to track —but only a handful of metrics that actually matter to your business and senior leaders. In this session, we’ll discuss strategies for setting social media goals, tracking metrics, reporting data to leaders, and how to turn social data into insights.

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Social Media Metrics That Matter
STEPS TO ANALYZE, REPORT & TURN SOCIAL DATA INTO ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS
Michael Delgado
28 October 2020

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3. AGENDA
Social Metrics That Actually Matter
Ways to determine the social metrics that actually matter to your business
and steps for analyzing social data to make actionable decisions
Understanding Social Metric Benchmarks
Why understanding social media benchmarks for your industry will help you
set goals and measure campaign success
Turning Social Data into Actionable Insights
How to take your social campaign data and turn it into actionable insights
that can be applied to current campaigns
Social Reporting: Listening & Campaign Analysis
Steps for reporting actionable data to your leadership team -- and
templates to guide your detailed analysis or high-level overviews
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Social Media Metrics That Matter
HOW SOCIAL BENCHMARKING CAN GUIDE SOCIAL MEDIA GOALS & HELP YOU
MEASURE SUCCESS

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It’s not about vanity metrics like follower counts.
It’s about earning engagement that benefits your brand.

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Knowing where your target audience spends time is
key to developing your social channel strategies.

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Knowing what time your target audience wants to
engage is key to publishing strategy.
Peak IG time (CST)

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Knowing what type of content performs best on each
channel is key to driving your content strategy.

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Knowing how much to write on each channel will
impact your engagement rates.

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Knowing where your future audience spends time is
key to building recognition, trust and community.

12. Focus on key metrics your business cares about.
There are hundreds of social metrics that you could
pay attention to. Metrics only matter if they actually
help you measure what’s important to your
business.
Revenue: Leads & Sales
Reputation: Positive Engagement & Issues Mgmt
Retention: Email List, Retargeting, Community

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Start with asking questions before digging into the data.
1. What social metrics do you
analyze now? And why?
What metrics matter to you? What metrics matter to your leaders? What
metrics matter to your business? What metrics impact your social strategy?
2. Are you reporting the right
metrics? What’s missing?
The metrics you shared out two years ago might not be the right metrics to
share out today. TikTok wasn’t an important business channel for many even a
year ago. If you’re not communicating social trends and data points outside
your channels and industry, you’re not providing leadership with the full
picture.
3. How often do you educate your
leaders about new social metrics?
We get access to new metrics regularly within our social channel platforms and
social management tools. It’s your job to be aware of social metrics available --
and what data points can improve social business decisions. It’s also your job
to educate leaders on what data points you find most insightful.
4. What social data do you want to
analyze, but difficult to get?
As social channels evolve, new data is regularly available. Sadly, these new
data points aren’t always accessible in our social management platforms.
What data is holding you back from launching an innovative campaign?
5. What do you want to know?
We get access to new metrics regularly within our social channel platforms and
social management tools. How often do you educate your leaders on new data
points that could help with social strategy.

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Understanding Social Benchmarks
HOW INDUSTRY SOCIAL BENCHMARKING CAN GUIDE SOCIAL MEDIA GOALS & HELP
YOU MEASURE SUCCESS

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16. Understand social media benchmarks for your industry
Challenges:
Industry benchmarks may not be realistic for your social
channels if you don’t have an active community.
Industry benchmarks don’t specify positive vs. negative
engagement. Competition might earn more negative
engagement due to complaints.
Industry benchmarks on engagement rates are
impacted by follower counts.
Industry benchmarks don’t give insight into paid vs
organic content so data may be misleading.
Industry benchmarks for reach and engagement rates
shouldn’t be used during crisis periods.
One way to understand how your social channels and campaigns are performing is to be aware of industry
benchmarks. Using industry benchmarks can help you set goals based on competition -- and show senior leaders
how your campaigns compare with the best in class.
Benefits:
Industry benchmarks provide insight on engagement
rates and frequency of posting of competitors.
Industry benchmarks help you set goals based on top
orgs in your industry.
Industry benchmarks provide senior leadership with
data to measure your team’s social media success.
Industry benchmarks can serve as aspirational
engagement data to aim for on your social accounts.

17. Meaningless Metrics & Other Unknowns
Simply because a specific metric is tracked or publically available about your competition doesn’t mean that it’s useful
or applicable to your business. There are many unknowns about public, competitive data and some isn’t useful at all.
Meaningless Metrics:
Follower Count is sometimes a metric that leadership
might point to as a signal of success. Follower count doesn’t
mean the community will engage with you -- or that your
content will be organically visible
Sentiment data is always tricky since positive, negative or
neutral sentiment is based on specific words, emoticons or
other data in the social post, which may or may not be true
Demographic data of your followers is often not very
helpful since ages, genders, company size, seniority of
followers is difficult to know for sure (or control)
Number of Posts gives you an idea of frequency rate of
your competitor or your brand, but doesn’t give you anything
helpful in regards to engagement activity.
Unknown Activators:
Paid Social activities will obviously increase overall visibility
and engagement metrics on campaigns and accounts. Don’t
set yourself up for failure if you don’t have the same sorts of
marketing budgets as others in your industry.
Influencer Marketing is a way for brands to get far more
visibility, tagging, mentions and engagement. It’s not fair to
compare your social media efforts against a competitor that
has Lady Gaga talking about your competitor.
Email marketing is a quick way for companies to
encourage their list to take action on something, which can
include taking part of a social media campaign, engaging on
content, etc.
Crisis mode is also unknown. A brand could get an influx in
engagement and mentions because they are in a crisis.

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19. Twitter Benchmark Data for Brands:
.77% Daily Posts & .045% Engagement
Source:RivalIQ

20. Instagram Benchmark Data for Brands:
.62% Daily Posts & 1.22% Engagement
Source:RivalIQ

21. Facebook Benchmark Data for Brands:
.83% Daily Posts & .09% Engagement
Source:RivalIQ

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TikTok engagement rates decrease as follower
counts rise -- similar to other social networks.

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COVID-19 caused many brands to reduce posting in March, which increased
engagement rates due to fewer posts for social algorithms to pull from.

24. Competitive Research
Source:RivalIQ

25. Strategies for gathering benchmark & competitor data
You should collect and analyze benchmark and competitor data at least annually -- or whenever you’re setting your
quarterly, half-year or yearly goals. Benchmark and competitor data will provide you objective data to compare to.
Data sources:
Facebook Insights will provide insights on pages on
Facebook you want to track. Data includes: number of
updates, total page likes, engagement this week.
LinkedIn Analytics will provide insights on companies
similar to yours. Data includes: number of updates, new
followers, total followers, engagement rate.
BuzzSumo provide Twitter Insights on number of followers,
retweet ratio, reply ratio, average retweets. It also provides
social share counts on content.
Keyhole can help you track engagement of any brand on
Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Industry Reports:
Rival IQ provides yearly reports on how key industries are
performing on social channels, which includes analysis on
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Sprout Social Index provides annual reports on social
media activity by social channel -- including special reports
during crisis times (e.g. COVID-19).
Global agencies can also provide social benchmarking
reports for your industry for a fee.

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Turning Social Data Into Insights
WAYS TO USE SOCIAL DATA TO IMPROVE CAMPAIGNS & PIVOT TO RELEVANT TOPICS
THAT MATTER TO YOUR AUDIENCES & BUSINESS

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Global social listening provided real-time data on
concerns of consumers and businesses:
Some key issues discussed by our
communities:
● COVID-19 health tips
● Social Distancing
● Mental health issues
● Stay at Home & Lockdown
● Business closures
● Remote working & WFH
● Unemployment & furloughs
● Xenophobia & Anti-Asian Racism
● Police brutality
● Pride Month & Black LGBTQ+ Issues
● Protests
● Black Lives Matter
● Fake News & Misinformation
● Trump
● U.S. Election

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FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP
COVID-19 virus spread
incites stay at home
orders in many regions
Unemployment, furloughs
and layoffs increase. WFH
orders in place for many
COVID-19 fears fuel
Anti-Asian racism &
xenophobia
Misinformation spreads
online and political parties
take sides on business
closures, mask wearing and
validity of global pandemic
George Floyd is killed by a
police officer on May 25 on
video, which sparks BLM
protests and activities
Brands speak out against
systemic racism toward Black
communities and discuss
how they are taking action.
More violence toward Black
community reported.
Pride Month & Increased
discussion on the violence
faced by our transgender and
gender non-comforming
communities
More than 1,000 companies join
ad boycott against Facebook &
Instagram due to spread of
racism and misinformation.
Boycott led by NAACP
& Color of Change
Political ads increase
on social, while
distrust of info on
social continues
Potential bans and restrictions on
TikTok app discussed due to data
privacy concerns in India, Pakistan,
Japan, Australia and U.S.
#StopHateForProfit
campaigns calls
freeze on Instagram

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FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP
COVID-19 virus spread
incites stay at home
orders in many regions
Unemployment, furloughs
and layoffs increase. WFH
orders in place for many
COVID-19 fears fuel
Anti-Asian racism,
xenophobia
Misinformation spreads
online and political parties
take sides on business
closures, mask wearing and
validity of actual pandemic
George Floyd is killed by a
police officer on May 24 on
video, which sparks BLM
protests and activities
Brands speak out against
systemic racism toward Black
communities and discuss
how they are taking action
Increased discussion on the
violence faced by our
transgender and gender
non-corming communities
More than 1,000 companies
join ad boycott against
Facebook & Instagram due
to spread of racism and
misinformation. Boycott led
by NAACP
#StopHateForProfit
campaigns calls
freeze on Instagram
posts on 9/25
Potential bans and restrictions on
TikTok app discussed due to data
privacy concerns in India, Pakistan,
Japan, Australia and U.S
Experian South Africa data incident
reported. Paused social content
about data & I.D. protection
FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP
Social media & messaging
app usage spikes +40%
across demographics
Daily video stories, live video and
pre-recorded video content drives
most engagement on social. TikTok &
IG videos take off. YouTube restricts
ads on COVID-19 content and bans
creators sharing misinformation
Brands discuss ways to honor BLM.
Social networks focus on reducing
hate speech and misinformation.
Algorithms update and flag content
Global companies reduce spending or
stop all paid (and even organic)
content on Facebook and Instagram,
reducing overall social ad costs and
ad competition for active brands
#HATEISAVIRUS #STOPHATEFORPROFIT#BLACKLIVESMATTER

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FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP
COVID-19 virus spread
incites stay at home
orders in many regions
Unemployment, furloughs
and layoffs increase. WFH
orders in place for many
COVID-19 fears fuel
Anti-Asian racism &
xenophobia
Misinformation spreads
online and political parties
take sides on business
closures, mask wearing and
validity of global pandemic
George Floyd is killed by a
police officer on May 25 on
video, which sparks BLM
protests and activities
Brands speak out against
systemic racism toward Black
communities and discuss
how they are taking action.
More violence toward Black
community reported.
Pride Month & Increased
discussion on the violence
faced by our transgender and
gender non-comforming
communities
More than 1,000 companies join
ad boycott against Facebook &
Instagram due to spread of
racism and misinformation.
Boycott led by NAACP
& Color of Change
Political ads increase
on social, while
distrust of info on
social continues
Potential bans and restrictions on
TikTok app discussed due to data
privacy concerns in India, Pakistan,
Japan, Australia and U.S.
#StopHateForProfit
campaigns calls
freeze on Instagram

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FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP
COVID-19 virus spread
incites stay at home
orders in many regions
Unemployment, furloughs
and layoffs increase. WFH
orders in place for many
COVID-19 fears fuel
Anti-Asian racism &
xenophobia
Misinformation spreads
online and political parties
take sides on business
closures, mask wearing and
validity of global pandemic
George Floyd is killed by a
police officer on May 25 on
video, which sparks BLM
protests and activities
Brands speak out against
systemic racism toward Black
communities and discuss
how they are taking action.
More violence toward Black
community reported.
Pride Month & Increased
discussion on the violence
faced by our transgender and
gender non-comforming
communities
More than 1,000 companies join
ad boycott against Facebook &
Instagram due to spread of
racism and misinformation.
Boycott led by NAACP
& Color of Change
Political ads increase
on social, while
distrust of info on
social continues
Potential bans and restrictions on
TikTok app discussed due to data
privacy concerns in India, Pakistan,
Japan, Australia and U.S.
#StopHateForProfit
campaigns calls
freeze on Instagram

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Black Lives Matter conversations dominated social
channels in late March & June. Tone deaf content
criticized.

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Social Media Reporting
STEPS FOR CREATING OBJECTIVE, ACTIONABLE AND CONCISE REPORTS FOR YOUR
SENIOR LEADERS

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42. Keep social reporting succinct and objective.
Senior leaders don’t have a lot of time so it’s important to provide a high-level report that is objective, succinct and
actionable. Train yourself to write executive summaries with the essential items that leadership needs to know.
Overview: Brief overview of situation, issue or
campaign. Write clearly, objectively and succinctly.
Key Findings:
● Bullet the main ideas
● Provide data points to support your findings
● Insights on trending (up/down)
● Key themes and influential mentions
Visuals:
● Add relevant social trending charts
● Screenshots of social posts to support findings
● Notable or influential engagements
● Social sentiment: positive, negative, neutral
● Global reports can provide % of digital mentions
by region, country

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Identify key metrics to help your org understand
trends and issues.
High level reports can include:
● Key Insights: What’s happening?
● Trending: Mention Chart (hourly, daily, weekly)
● Impact: Engagement & Reach
● Issues: Themes & Hashtags
● Brand/Industry: Impact on your org
● Screenshots of Influential Mentions
● Sentiment
Quantitative data will be easy to update, but the themes,
sentiment and influential mention analysis requires time
to analyze. Set time limits for your reporting periods and
inform leadership of your limitations due to time.
Example 1: Social Listening Report

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Identify key metrics to help your leaders understand
the wins and challenges during the month, quarter
or campaign period.
High level reports can include:
● Key Insights: What’s happening?
● Impact: Engagement & Reach
● Conversions: Leads, Sales, Email List, Subscribers
● Screenshots of Influential Mentions
● Trending: Mention Chart (hourly, daily, weekly)
● Sentiment
● Insights
Quantitative data will be easy to update, but the themes,
sentiment and influential mention analysis requires time to
analyze. Set time limits for your reporting periods and inform
leadership of your limitations due to time.
Example 2: Social Campaign Report

45. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Ask questions first before digging into the social
data. Gaining insights starts by asking the right types of
questions first -- and then finding the data to analyze.
2. It’s overwhelming to pay attention to all the social
data. Focus on data sets that impact your business.
Ignore vanity metrics. It’s about earning engagement that
matters to your business (e.g. web traffic, revenue,
reputation, sales, community). Figure this out.
3. Keep your eyes open to new social data sets not
available in your social management tool. Social
channels provide interesting data that listening tools and
management tools can’t get right away.
4. Analyze the social media benchmarks for your
industry and keep up with social channel trends to
help you set goals -- and know when to pivot to new
content or channels. Inform your team and leadership. mikedelgado.org
LinkedIn & Twitter: @mikedelgado
5. Know the type of content that performs best on
each social channel (video, photo carousel, daily
stories, live content) and when to share that content
out. It’s your job to know how to reach and engage
your target audiences on social.
6. Keep your social media reports objective,
actionable, insightful and concise. Share key
takeaways, trends, how it impacts your brand and
proactive recommendations.
7. It’s your job to keep leadership informed on the
data that actually matters. Just because you’ve
reported certain data for the last two years doesn’t
mean you should continue. Social channels and data
evolves and so should your reporting.