It’s hard to know if you’re “doing” social media right. I mean, yes, you post unique content, you respond to comments, and you regularly engage with other accounts in your niche by liking their posts or leaving comments in relevant threads. But is it working?? By working, we’re referring to people liking your posts, following your page, clicking your links and/or visiting your website.
To know if you really are using social media to benefit your brand as an author, you can track your success using your social media insights. That is, if you’ve signed up for a professional profile like the Facebook Business Page or Instagram Creator Account, which offer you tons of added benefits for building your brand. Once you’ve created your Facebook Page or Instagram Creator Account, experiment with posting for a couple weeks and then venture into the world of your social media insights.
Find your Insights on Facebook:
And on Instagram:
Alright, now take a look at three key ways to measure your success on social media using your social media insights!
Follower Count
Having a high follower count makes a good first impression, but if it isn’t growing week-over-week you need to change up your strategy. A steady increase in followers means your account is reaching more people organically as well as getting new people’s attention.
If your follower growth rate is only increasing by 1% a month, re-evaluate your content strategy.
Content Interactions
Tracking your content interactions, i.e. how many likes, comments or saves your post and stories get is important. It lets you monitor just how interested your audience is in the content you are creating.
Your social media analytics will show your overall interactions as well as the interactions for each post.
Here’s what industry standards tell us:
- Less than 1% = low engagement rate
- Between 1% and 3.5% = average/good engagement rate
- Between 3.5% and 6% = high engagement rate
- Above 6% = very high engagement rate
How can you get from 1% to 3.5% or higher? We share a few tips for updating your social media content strategy below.
Accounts Reached
Reach reflects the number of people that have seen your posts. You’ll be able to see the number of followers that have seen your post, as well as non-followers.
A good benchmark to set as a brand with a smaller following is a 36% reach rate for posts and 7% reach rate for stories. If you aren’t achieving these results, re-evaluate!
8 ways to refresh your social media strategy
Keep an eye on your social media insights each week. If you see yourself dipping into the red, try switching up your content strategy with a few of these ideas:
- Post more videos – people love quick eye-catching content.
- Change up your hashtags – keep your branded ones but, search for new popular hashtags.
- Write longer captions (but keep them interesting) and break them up with emojis.
- Modify your grid – you could incorporate more posts that you’ve designed in Canva, or images that align with your book from Unsplash.
- Try posting when your followers are online – you can find this data in your Instagram Insights or in a Google search for “best times to post on social media.”
- Refresh who you’re following – it’s good practice to unfollow old accounts who aren’t overly active anymore, and follow new accounts that align with your niche and genre.
- Share more content to your stories!
- Engage, engage, engage! We can’t stress this enough. You can’t wait for people to come to you. Go to them by leaving comments or responding to questions on relevant posts. And, make sure you respond to every comment and message you receive.
You can do more of what works for you when it comes to social media by tracking your insights and analytics. Don’t be afraid to switch things up and try new ways of engaging with your audience! Remember, your followers want to learn something new, be entertained, and feel like they’re part of a community. Let that motivate the ideas for your posts, and then regularly monitor to see what’s working for you.
Find more tips and tricks from the Tellwell marketing team here!
