If you want your business to get the most out of social media, it’s important that you know how to use this medium to engage with people. And while there are some social media engagement best practices you can use to get started, it’s important to continuously measure your efforts and adjust accordingly.

Since you want to be sure that you’re using the right metrics to make strategy adjustments, here are the nine metrics you need to know about:

Referral Traffic

If you look at your website’s analytics data, you will be able to see where the visitors are coming from. One of your goals should be to continuously increase the number of visitors who come to your site from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and any other social networks you’re using.

Audience Growth Rate

This metric is specific to Facebook. Because it expresses new followers as a percent-change over time, it’s very useful for seeing which points in your social media for business usage have led to the most growth.

CTR

One way to improve social engagement is by experimenting with different update titles and formats. Then by comparing how many people click the different variations, you’ll be able to learn more about what people respond to best.

Conversion

Although this metric can be a little tricky, the right tool can make it possible for you to get some insight into how many leads or new customers you’re gaining directly from social media.

Customer Service Utilization

This is a very interesting metric. By using the following formula, Avg. Time x Costs Per Hour x Customer Service Inquiries Completed = Savings, you’ll be able to gauge just how effective social media is as a customer support tool.

Potential Reach

This metric refers to the combined followers of the people following you. While it can be useful in certain situations, it can also be misleading. The reason is it can set unrealistic expectations. So if you’re ever looking at this metric or using it in a presentation, be sure to provide the proper context.

Influence

This metric is closely related to potential reach. And as with potential reach, even though there may be a situation where it makes sense to refer to this metric, you’re ultimately going to get much more actionable information by focusing on the other social media engagement metrics on this list.

Bounce Rate

While it’s fairly common for a significant percentage of social media users to view one page of a website and then leave, focusing on this metric can help you come up with new ways to get social media visitors to view more than just one page of your site.

Average Engagement Rate

This metric can be useful for keeping a finger on the pulse of your social media activity. While occasional drops are inevitable, if you notice a continuous drop in social media engagement, it’s probably a sign that you need to rethink what you’re sharing and posting.

If you would like an easy way to view and make decisions based on the most important social media metrics, be sure to take a look at our social media engagement tool. If you’re looking for the simplest way to stay on top of your company’s social media efforts, be sure to take a look at the Send Social Media Dashboard 7-day trial!

Although there was a time when many people questioned the validity of social media for business purposes, that time has passed. Since businesses across countless industries are boosting their bottom lines through different social media strategies, let’s take a look at ten ways you can use social platforms to empower your business:

Learn About Your Target Audience

If you want to know more about people who may be potential customers for your business, social media is a great way to learn that type of information. Because people share so much information through social platforms on a daily basis, all you need is a tool that can help you monitor and analyze the information that’s most relevant to your business.

Target the Right Audience

Not only is social media an excellent tool for gaining insight into your audience, but it can also enable you to directly interact with that audience.

Find New Customers

When it comes to sharing content, you want what you post to get as much exposure as possible throughout your target audience. But just because your target audience is likely wider than strictly potential customers doesn’t mean that social media is only for marketing. One reason so many companies are on board with social media for business purposes is that it’s possible to generate quality leads directly through social media.

Reduce the Cost of Lead Generation

While social media probably isn’t the only option you want to use for lead generation, given the fact that it’s very cost-effective, it should be the main component of your overall strategy for generating new leads.

Get Instant Feedback

One of the great things about using social media for business is if you want to get candid feedback for a new product or any other topic, you can start collecting reactions from your target demographic in a matter of minutes.

Stay Ahead of Competitors

As you start formalizing a social media strategy for your business, be sure to include competitive research. By monitoring your competitors, as well as your industry as a whole, you’ll be able to find many opportunities to stay ahead of the curve.

Increase Website Traffic

Social media for business efforts shouldn’t exist in a bubble. Since platforms like Facebook and Twitter are designed for sharing, that’s exactly what you should do with the content you create for your website.

Give Content the Exposure It Deserves

As mentioned in the last point, social sites can help you drive traffic directly to new blog posts and other content. Additionally, there have been multiple experiments that show when content gets social media attention, it ends up ranking better for relevant terms in Google.

Provide Customer Support

Thanks to the instant nature of social media, it can be a great tool for providing very fast support to customers.

Build An Even Stronger Brand

By implementing a social media marketing strategy, you’ll be able to continually increase brand awareness for your business.

If you want a powerful tool to help manage all of your social activity, our social media dashboard may be the perfect fit for your needs. If you’re looking for the simplest way to stay on top of your company’s social media efforts, be sure to take a look at the Send Social Media Dashboard 7-day trial!