Hot off the Presses.

Whether you work in corporate or own your own business, odds are you’ve heard the buzzword KPIs thrown around a time or two.

KPIs, also known as key performance indicators, help businesses track crucial parts of their business like return on investment (ROI), website performance, social media engagement, email marketing efforts and overall business performance.

Basically, KPIs are a good way to figure out if the sh*t you’re doing for your business is actually working.

Let’s break down social media KPIs and what metrics you should be paying attention to if you want to boost your business.

Why are Social Media KPIs Important?

Just like any other marketing efforts, tracking your social media KPIs is crucial for running a successful business. When you track KPIs over time, you can learn a lot about your business, audience and how your content is performing.

Say you made a change in your Instagram story strategy, and suddenly you see a huge drop in your engagement numbers. Thanks to tracking your KPIs, you’ll be able to know exactly where you went wrong and pivot before your business takes a dip in the wrong direction.

How to Choose Which Social Media KPIs to Track

When it comes to choosing KPIs to track for social media, the first thing to do is:

1. Think about your starting point. Are you a new business, or is your biz well-established? Your starting point will help determine which KPIs are relevant for your business.
2. What are your goals? Are there things that you want to achieve through social media? What do you believe is the most important thing to start with?
3. Do you plan on tracking your ROI? If so, make sure you’re tracking metrics that you can use to measure and calculate your social media ROI.

Social Media KPIs for Reach

Every time you make a post, you’re essentially casting a net into the ether and hoping to reach as many people as possible. This refers to your social media reach. Tracking metrics that shed light on your reach is crucial for understanding whether your campaigns are targeting the right audience and how far your message is spreading.

Here are the most common social media KPIs for reach:

Profile Views

This measures how many people are actively clicking on your profile to learn more about you. A spike in profile views usually signals curiosity or interest sparked by your content, making it a great metric to monitor after running a campaign, posting something viral or launching a new offer.

Follower Count:

Tracking your followers can help you understand how many people are following and unfollowing your account over time. While follower growth alone doesn’t guarantee success, tracking these numbers can help you understand which types of content are helping you build a social media community, and which are scaring people off.

Post Reach

This refers to how many times a unique account views one of your posts. For example, a person may view your post 10 times, but it will only be counted as one in terms of reach. A high reach indicates strong distribution and can be a sign that your content is being picked up by the algorithm or shared by others.

Impressions

Since impressions count every time a visitor views your post or profile, regardless of how many times the same person sees it, this number will almost always be higher than reach. For example, when someone views your post 10 times, it will count as 10 impressions.

Share of Voice (SOV)

SOV indicates how frequently your brand is discussed in comparison to your competition. Some things you can track to measure Share of Voice include the use of branded hashtags, how many times your brand is tagged or mentioned, post shares, reposts and stitches. A strong SOV is a good sign that your brand is dominating the conversation in your niche.

Social Media Engagement KPIs

Anytime someone interacts with your social media profile, external links or posts, it’s considered engagement. And while there’s a lot of hype around boosting social media engagement, it’s only meaningful if you’re getting likes, shares and saves from the right audience. Engagement KPIs help you measure how your audience is responding to your posts, and whether you’re reaching the right audience at all.

Clicks & Click-Through Rates (CTR)

Depending on which tools you use for tracking KPIs, there are various types of clicks that you might be interested in tracking. At the most basic level, you should track how many times your posts are clicked, how many times external links are clicked, and how far users click through your profile and/or website. If you have access to more advanced tracking tools, you may be able to track advanced metrics like how often someone clicks ‘read more’ on your captions.

Comments & Story Replies

Tracking how often people comment on your posts is a great way to gauge how engaging your content is. One thing to keep in mind is that you are controlling for bot comments and filtering out auto comment replies from your own business. Another great thing to track is story replies.

Likes, Shares, Saves

We love a good double-tap. Understanding how often your posts are being liked, shared and saved for later can provide invaluable insight into your marketing campaigns. For example, these metrics can help you learn which times are best for posting on social media and what SEO keywords are bringing you traffic.

External Link Clicks

Depending on what you’ve linked in your bio, tracking the traffic to your website, downloads or YouTube channel is a great way to determine how well your campaigns are performing.

Using KPIs to Measure Return on Investment (ROI)

As mentioned above, you need to be careful that you don’t get too wrapped up in big numbers that aren’t serving your business. For example, you could have 100,000 followers and not be closing any sales. Or, you could have 500 followers and hit $20,000 months. It all comes down to using KPIs that determine your return on investment.

Some common KPIs to measure your ROI are:

Cost Per Click (CPC)

According to a study by Nutshell CRM, the average social media CPC ranges from $0.38 to $5.26 per click. You can get the best CPC by understanding your audience, performing A/B testing, continuously optimizing your ads or boosted posts, and monitoring performance over time.

Bounce Rate

Tracking bounce rate can help you determine where major issues are in your business. For example, high bounce rates often indicate broken links, a lack of optimization or content that is not aligning with your target audience. Ultimately, if you don’t figure out what’s causing it, you’ll end up with lost opportunities and a negative impact on conversions. How you track your bounce rate will depend on the tracking platforms available to you, but Google Analytics is a great starting point.

Average Order Value (AOV)

AOV looks at how much your customers are spending per order. If you’re running an e-commerce business, you might want to look at which social media channels are resulting in the greatest AOV. Measuring AOV can also help you assess your return on ad spending and provide insight into customer behavior and their overall lifetime value.

Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions (CPM)

CPM refers to the cost per 1,000 impressions (also known as views) on your social media ads. This metric is useful when your main goal is brand awareness, since it tells you how much you’re paying to simply be seen. If your CPM is too high, it may be a sign that your targeting is too narrow or your content isn’t engaging enough. Keeping tabs on your CPM helps you manage brand visibility at scale without blowing your budget.

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

CPL measures how much you’re spending to capture a single lead from your social campaigns. This may be from an email subscriber, form submission or someone booking a call. Tracking CPL is especially important if you’re running lead gen ads or using social media to build a sales funnel. A high CPL might mean your audience isn’t aligned with your offer or your CTA needs work. A low CPL with high lead quality is a strong sign your content is dialed in.

Social Media Customer Satisfaction KPIs

Tracking customer satisfaction on social media goes beyond likes and replies. These KPIs help you understand how happy your customers are with your brand, how responsive your team is and how likely someone is to recommend you. Whether you’re in ecommerce, service-based business or SaaS, these KPIs matter for retention, reputation and referrals.

Response Time & Rate

This KPI tracks how quickly and how often your team responds to DMs, comments and questions on socials. High response rates and quick replies show followers that you’re active, attentive and ready to help, which can boost trust and loyalty.

Testimonials

Social proof sells. Gathering and sharing testimonials from happy clients and customers is one of the most powerful KPIs for conversion. Whether it’s a formal review or a DM screenshot, these stories build trust and show new followers you deliver real results.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT is typically collected through quick post-interaction surveys. On socials, this could be gathered through Instagram story polls, DMs or follow-up emails after a purchase. It’s a fast, effective way to keep tabs on how people feel after engaging with your brand.

Use Social Media Management to Scale Your Business

At the end of the day, tracking KPIs is more than crunching numbers; it’s about understanding your audience, setting up a conversion-powered content calendar, refining your strategy and making data-driven decisions that scale your business.

But let’s be real. When it comes to social media KPIs, knowing where to start can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re running ads or boosting posts.

That’s where we come in.

Do Epic Shit Media specializes in creating customized full-service social media management packages that will take you from zero to hero.

Apply to work with us today and let’s do epic shit together!