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!