Posted 12.04.2022 by Tomori Uriel
Measuring social media KPI is critical to the success of any marketing. (It’s in the name itself: Key performance indicator).
But marketers can’t make the most of KPIs. Only 37% of marketers are confident in their metrics, because part of your B2B social media strategy is to gain significant growth for your B2B business.
For growth to occur, you need to track your spending and evaluate the right metrics.
According to LinkedIn, 58 percent of marketers have to prove social media ROI to get approval for future budget requests. Not to mention the added nuance of B2B.
Should you measure social media against brand goals, demand gen goals or both?
Don’t worry; it’s easier than it sounds.
At Sculpt, we design and execute result-oriented B2B social media campaigns for growth-stage startups, established small businesses, and complex enterprise teams.
We’ve put together this guide with everything you need to know about setting and measuring social media KPIs, including examples that you’ll find helpful.
Here is the blueprint to experiencing improved B2B social media ROI and growth for your B2B business through social media KPIs.
KPI means Key Performance Indicator. You may have come across KPI in different places. That’s because it is not limited to social media marketing.
Social media KPIs are metrics you use to measure the performance of your social media campaigns and framework.
To put that into context, KPI helps you measure B2B social media marketing performance.
That is, if you want to evaluate your social media marketing success and growth, then KPIs help a great deal.
However, measuring B2B social media KPIs involves evaluating essential metrics that show how well you’re doing.
Notice the “important” here.
Many numbers could get thrown in your face when you want to measure social media performance. You will get overwhelmed.
Before now, you could easily check performance by how many customers visit your store.
Today, things are different.
There are more metrics, numbers, values, and business models to show campaign success. You get colored lines, charts, percentages, and just too many numbers staring at you.
Yes, we’ve all been there.
But the issue here is that, they can get confusing. This is why you must get your KPIs right.
This guide will teach you how to find, set, and measure social media KPIs.
The conversation about social media KPIs is often in the context of social media ROI.
Of course, we throw ROI around a lot. In most cases, it refers to the money you get back on your investment. But it doesn’t always have to be financial or monetary.
It could as well be for engagement and other customer-driven initiatives.
For example, when you invest a certain amount of money or time in a campaign, your social media ROI is how much the result/revenue you get compared to your investment.
Easy, right?
You might want to ask, what’s the nexus between social media KPI and social media ROI?
This is it.
Improved social media ROI is a crucial target in every social media strategy. That’s why measuring KPI is necessary. But you need SMART KPIs to improve your social media ROI.
So if your social media ROI is monetary, your KPI should show how well you’re meeting your targets.
And when they are customer-centered activities, your social media ROI will most likely be improved engagements, reach, and consumer loyalty – there are KPIs that help you measure that too.
Social media KPIs differ based on their targets and business goals. That’s why your social media analytics spreadsheet has numbers, percentages, charts, and lines.
But effective social media KPIs depend on marketing goals.
Since all B2B businesses differ in terms of what they intend to use social media to achieve, we’ll discuss the different types of social media KPI and metrics.
The term ‘reach’ is about the size of your audience. It refers to your audience growth, the share of voice, social post reach, and brand mentions.
It provides answers to questions like:
You’ll get all the answers to these and more on what and how to measure for awareness.
Audience growth is your follower count. But it’s also a metric that shows how your follower count changes over time.
Your audience growth reflects the number of followers you have gained (or lost) on your social media page within a timeframe.
This means the audience growth metric tells you:
For example, if you’ve set your goals to grow your audience by 40% within a month, then you can use this easy formula to calculate if you’re on course:
The number of New Followers/Total Followers Multiplied By 100.
This equals your audience growth rate percentage.
Social post reach is more specific than the number of impressions.
It is the estimated number of social media users who have seen a social post or content within a period at least once.
Simply put, it is the number of people who have seen a post since it went live.
The two significant factors that influence all kinds of social media content are;
Timing is essential because it allows you to make social posts when your audience is engaging.
Basically, you get higher insights on valuable content.
Another thing to note about post reach is that it doesn’t matter if a user sees your social post more than once. It is only calculated once. Let’s clarify that:
Let’s say a user has come across your content twice since it went live. The post reach remains one.
Now, here are simple formulas to calculate your social post reach:
Number of Total Impressions / Frequency = Unique Post Reach
Note: Most ad and social platforms will give you this data already, so you don’t need to calculate it.
What about Impressions?
Impressions show how often your content appears on someone’s timeline or newsfeed.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the person saw the post. It just means they had a chance to see it on their feed. They could have scrolled past without realizing or refreshed their feed before getting to it.
While having a higher number is preferable, understanding their significance (why) matters most.
A brand mention is when your brand, product, or URL is in a unique piece of user-generated content on social media.
Brand mention can be a tagged mention that links to your name directly. Or an untagged mention where they are talking about you.
It reflects the number of people talking about your brand, whether you’re part of the conversation or not.
Some platforms call it ‘Tags.’ It is a social media metric that measures your relevance and reputation.
Mentions or tags could happen in a comment, social media post, or Instagram story. But not all social media platforms track this metric.
So if you want to measure your relevance and reputation, this is the KPI. And you may need to use third-party social media monitoring tools.
Share of Voice may not appear to be a critical metric, but it can be an effective way to grow your B2B business and measure social media performance.
For example, mentions can help you reach new businesses interested in your services and could convert.
They can also help you discover new trends happening in your industry.
But beyond that, the share of voice growth metrics can help you measure your business’ brand awareness. It can indicate the impact of your social media campaigns or marketing messages.
There are a handful of brand mention metrics that you can use to measure social media performance and track growth. Here are some of the main ones:
The volume of Brand Mentions
Measuring YOUR mentions in a period compared to other competitors’ mentions gives you a snapshot of the popularity of a brand on social media and its relative awareness.
This simple metric reflects the frequency of brand mention in social media posts.
Whether the platform is Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, the volume of brand mentions can help you determine your brand’s popularity.
Users could like, comment, retweet, react or share your content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
These are your social media interactions. Tracking this metric means you can identify how engaging posts that contain your brand are to the audience.
The more the interactions on such posts, the better for you because it indicates that a good number of your audience resonates with the content.
Now that’s that on measuring key performance indicators and metrics for reach. But there’s more.
Don’t get caught.
People don’t necessarily need to engage with content to notice it, be interested in it, or be persuaded by it.”
“Engagement doesn’t equal persuasion.” Instead, build a deeper connection with the brand and product.
For example, when you optimize for video watch time, you can measure their attention, and retarget them by interest.
Measuring B2B social media KPIs for engagements allows you to identify the quality of interactions you have with your audience.
Advanced: These metrics can be broken down and compared by the social media channel, month, content format, or theme for deeper analysis.
While awareness metrics tell you the number of people seeing your social media posts. Engagement metrics let you know if they’re acting on it.
However, not all engagements are equal, so it might be helpful to focus on one-like comments.
To find the answers, here are the key performance indicators to look out for:
Traffic is the number of visits to your social media account and posts driven to your websites during a particular period.
Website traffic is an effective metric used in measuring social media campaign successes.
The higher the number of times people click links on your posts, account bio, and social media campaigns to get to your web pages, the better.
The first thing to know about comments is that it doesn’t always indicate things are okay. Having a massive number of comments under your social media posts is good…
…bad news, but sometimes.
However, they remain crucial social media metrics. Comments are one of the fastest ways to get feedback from clients.
It’s a quick way of knowing what users think about your products or a particular post.
So if you have a plan to start creating social media content that is engaging and interesting, then comments will be a KPI when evaluating progress.
This is similar to applause metrics, which we will discuss next.
Social media likes. Need I say much?
We all know this one. It could be double-tapping on Instagram, tapping the thumbs-up icon on Facebook, or the love icon on Twitter.
Likes or favorites reflect the number of people who find your post interesting. So, if you’re looking for more engagements on your posts, the number of likes you have in a period is a key performance indicator that shows your progress.
Facebook and Instagram now hide the number of likes from the public, but you can still find the information on your social media account analytics spreadsheet.
The term ‘Shares’ could be different depending on the platform. Don’t forget that all platforms are unique in their way.
On Twitter, you retweet; on LinkedIn, you re-share; on Facebook, you share; on Pinterest, you repin, and it goes on and on.
Your audience could either share your posts or profile. Whichever, it is a great way to gauge how much they value your content and service.
It means they liked it so much and had to share it with their friends. Or they shared it with someone they believe needs your services, which is still good.
A high number of shares shows a post’s value and degree of engagement.
The term ‘conversion’ means different things to different businesses. Generally, it means a preferred action that leads to revenue.
Let’s break that down.
When they take the desired action, they become conversions.
So, this metric reflects how effective your social media strategy is in leading the audience to take decisive and actionable steps.
Your social media posts could gain engagements but not generate leads that can convert.
If you are interested in measuring KPIs for conversion, you need to take a closer look at how to generate leads on social media.
A large following on social media is good, but how many leads have you generated from these?
Usually, the ultimate goal is to make sales, and if you’re only getting engagements without leads, something is wrong.
Maybe your audience does not find your content valuable enough, or you’re on the wrong platform.
For example, B2B businesses had a 65% success rate in their lead generation from LinkedIn in 2021. According to Startupbonsai, LinkedIn is also the most effective social media platform for B2B lead generation.
So if you have plans of converting from social media, one important metric to keep an eye on is the number of leads generated.
You can take this quiz on lead generation to improve your understanding of lead generation. Also, learn how to outsource leads from varieties of sources.
Newsletter Signups is a non-revenue conversion.
However, the number of signups for your newsletter determines your conversions. So, you can measure your conversions by how many people signed up.
For example, you could have a newsletter where you send product offerings, social resources, and updates to clients who sign up.
But you first need them to submit their contact details, which are their email addresses in most cases.
When you measure reputation, you understand your brand’s health, which helps you sustain your relationship with your customers.
You can monitor reviews, users’ experience with the product, and actively contribute to the discussion.
You can measure:
This is a customer service KPI that can also measure reputation. Feedback and reviews can come in comments, emails, or calls. And they help you monitor customer service performance.
You can count the inbound and outbound.
While it helps you to know how many users enjoy your services or not, the bigger picture is that the total number of feedback and reviews you get can indicate how reputable and renowned your B2B business is.
More feedback means more businesses are using your product.
When it comes to ROI, several leading indicators could tell you if social media is contributing to more revenue (return) over a long period.
More traffic, more leads, more signups, more engagement are examples.
You can measure ROI for:
Before calculating social media ROI, it is vital that your B2B business has clearly defined goals.
When you’ve set your goals, created a social media strategy, and started some campaigns. Your team has put in quite the effort, and it’s time to get returns.
Measuring social media ROI helps to answer questions like;
There are different metrics to help you measure your social media ROI. Let’s look at four of them:
The leads you generate from your social media accounts are a great way to measure your social media ROI.
It’s easy to get carried away when your posts start getting traction and interactions. But ultimately, you need to ask yourself, which of these users liking, clicking, and commenting can become customers?
You can generate high-quality leads from your social media posts and nurture them till they become conversions. Your leads don’t have to buy your products immediately.
For example, if you’ve created a social media campaign advertising your products and services, how many people have come in to enquire more about your product? Are people clicking the link to see your product page and information?
The social media users clicking on the link to get more info are the leads, becoming conversions.
The number of newsletter signups is a metric that helps you measure social media ROI.
Increased newsletter signups over a particular time show you’re getting good returns on your investment and vice versa.
If you’re looking for how to measure the success of a social media campaign, then website traffic is an excellent metric for you.
It is also a perfect indicator of how well your social media posts with links to your site are doing.
For example, suppose your B2B company targets increasing visits to your website product page by X%.
Then you insert links to your website on the posts you make. The number of people who see your posts and click to view your product pages – the desired action, will help you measure your social media ROI.
Another metric that can help you measure social media ROI.
Anyone can scroll through your content, but is anybody engaging with it? Are people interacting with your social media posts?
Engagement metrics provide information on how people interact with your social media content.
For example, FacebookInsights allows you to see which of your posts create the most interactions, such as likes, shares, and comments. Information like this helps you determine where your audience’s interests lie, meaning you know where to direct your efforts, resources and produce more valuable content.
Social media ROI can be monetary or customer-driven activities. Focusing your resources and efforts on producing valuable content means you’d expect audience engagement to grow.
Therefore, engagements and interactions on your posts count as your social media ROI. And this comes in the form of likes, clicks, comments, shares, and so on.
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There are different campaigns B2B businesses can run, but what are the best campaigns that deliver success?
What are the campaigns that work best?
Here are the top three:
B2B advertising doesn’t have to be boring. Especially when it’s on social media.
Why?
The nature of social media makes B2B marketers and companies appear approachable and relatable. Marketers can create interactive content that can provide a better return on ad spend or social media KPIs.
User-generated content is a social media campaign that’s been around for some time.
And it remains one of the campaigns that work best in 2023.
UGC is any content created by users of your product. UGC involves curating and sharing quality content from users on your social media pages with credit given to the source.
Not only is it a great way to increase engagement, but it can also help build brand credibility. It also helps to break the burden of creating content for social media.
Several B2B brands have used this campaign in the past, and it still works today.
For example, Buffer regularly curates pictures from its “Buffer Community” to share on their social media pages. They use this to show the rest of their users how others work and at the same time encourage more engagement and interaction.
Another example is Hootsuite’s viral #iWorkFromHere campaign in 2016.
UGC remains a highly effective campaign strategy to use even today.
Partnerships help you reach a more relevant audience to grow your lead. The primary purpose of partnerships is to reach a new audience to make them customers.
If you choose a strong partnership for your B2B business, then your follower count, engagements, and reach can grow enormously.
Before picking a partnership, it is crucial to get an audience’s clarity.
Partnerships can come in different forms. It could be by partnering with influencers, brand ambassadors, or other brands.
The purpose is to build a mutually beneficial relationship that involves reaching new audiences and generating more sales.
For example, 95% of Microsoft’s revenue comes through its numerous partnerships.
When setting B2B social media KPIs, harmonize them with your social media objectives.
For example, business A wants to improve its customers by 10% in three months. Business B wants to gain 1000 more followers on their Facebook page in the next two months.
Both businesses have different goals; hence they cannot have similar KPIs. Hence, They require different metrics to assess and measure their progress and success.
Don’t set rigid KPIs.
Be prepared to re-strategize or re-evaluate at some point, depending on progress made.
A time will come when you may need to make adjustments to resources, company goals, and so on.
Specific: Ensure your goals are clear from the start. Try your best to use less of “about,” “somewhere between.”. Be straightforward and specific with your objectives.
For example, are you hoping to get 500 more profile visits each month? Do you want to increase your brand’s Instagram organic followers by 1000 in the next three months?
Measurable: Measurement is a huge factor to consider. That is why your goals need to be specific and clear from the onset.
That way, you can track your progress.
For example, when you set a goal to reach 1000 organic followers within three months, you should be able to quantify and determine how close you are to 1000 during your periodic assessment.
Achievable: It could be tempting but don’t build castles in the air. Keep your goals attainable and set KPIs that are realistic and attainable.
Relevant: Earlier, we said everything starts with a strategy – a plan. It is essential to keep your targets pertinent to what you want.
Ensure your social media KPIs are on the same wavelength as the overall goals of your B2B business.
Timely: Keep your B2B social media KPIs timebound. Always make sure there is a timeframe to judge whether it was a success. One month? Two, three, six months? A year?
As we saw earlier, 1000 organic Instagram followers in three months.
Being SMART with your KPIs helps you and your marketing team stay dedicated to the goals. And work towards achieving them. It’s also easy to see if there’s been progress or not.
What exactly does your B2B business expect to gain from social media?
It is essential to understand why you’re using social media because it helps you measure Key Performance Indicators effectively.
Like Rebekah Radice says, “the key is to tie the objective to the outcome.”
Don’t forget that your social media objectives also need to support your primary business objectives.
You know the more important metrics when you understand your social media objectives.
There are different social media platforms, and each one has its uniqueness.
So measure KPIs that are specific to each channel. Our B2B social media framework will help you.
While every social media platform is unique, some have essential ways of measuring key performance indicators.
For example, there are Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics.
Although they all have built-in solutions that display metrics for your account, the interface differs. The way Facebook presents data differs from Twitter.
How these platforms calculate reach, engagement rates, and other metrics that matter in your KPIs may also differ slightly from one another.
Therefore, some objectives and goals may also require different approaches depending on the social media platforms.
Also, certain objectives and goals may be more challenging to reach on one social media platform than another. That is, the timeframe set to actualize a goal on Facebook may not essentially work for the same goal on Twitter or LinkedIn.
A CRM system helps you to understand client requirements better. With CRM your business will be better poised to understand and deliver client needs at every stage of the sales cycle through social media.
You can track individual leads in detail to determine how and when to persuade them to advance to the next level of the funnel.
Tracking these individual leads makes it easier to set and measure social media KPIs.
That way, you can pin your objectives to the number of leads that you convert or the success rate at helping the client determine what they need and where.
Examples of B2B CRM Systems You Can Choose From
You’d already have ideas about why B2B social media measurement is essential.
There are a handful of reasons why. The summary is that it allows you to gain crucial insight that’s decisive and actionable.
But you need more than a summary.
Let us look at three of the most important ones.
All successful social media marketing starts with a strategy, a plan. And the fastest + most effective way to find out if that plan is working is to monitor and measure.
If you want to know whether you’re succeeding at a business or not, you need to track KPIs.
For example, if your goal is to get more engagements and you’ve drafted out a strategy that’ll allow you to improve clicks, shares, comments, and likes.
Your expected social media KPI is a certain amount of engagement in X time.
However, it’s important to consistently measure your social media KPIs to arrive at the best result.
Before expecting a ‘return,’ you certainly have invested resources. That’s the way social media ROI works.
It could be money or time.
Measuring your B2B social media performance helps you allocate your resources judiciously.
Consistent B2B social media measurement can help you make budget-related decisions whether you need to increase or decrease expenses spent on a channel.
And this helps you get a cost-effective result.
When you consistently evaluate your social media performance by keeping an eye on the KPIs, you are poised to make better decisions that positively affect your strategy and improve your resource allocation.
In turn, they ensure you experience better social media ROI and growth.
For example, if you notice a decline in engagement, improve your tactics.
Measuring social media KPIs is crucial for any successful social media strategy. Without setting and measuring metrics, it is impossible to be sure about your social media performance and progress.
Moreover, setting and measuring these KPIs also makes reporting back to your boss easier! When you have set your goals, these indicators help you know how far you are from the targets. Whether you need to adjust your resources or return to the drawing board for a proper audit.
Our guide set you up to identify, and measure the KPIs that matter most to your B2B business’ social media objectives.
Virtually all social media platforms provide solutions for measuring social media metrics and KPIs. Each social media platform is unique in its way of presenting this information.
However, it is essential to note that not all social media platforms provide all your needs metrics. You’ll usually only find metrics like engagements and reach.
You may have to use third-party tools like Google Analytics and Hootsuite for other KPIs.
Every B2B business has its goals, and hence, KPIs may differ from time to time depending on the objectives. However, clicks are one of the most valuable KPIs for a B2B company. It is essential to lead the audience from social media to the B2B website, and clicks to your site is one metric your business should always keep an eye on, among others.
The objectives of your social media strategy will determine how you set and measure social media KPIs. If you want more engagements, you need to keep an eye on the likes, clicks, comments, shares you generate.
If you’re looking for more conversions, the KPIs that reflect this are leads generated, newsletter signups, form submissions.
There are a handful of tools that you can use to automate your social media reports and analytics. Some of these include Supermetrics, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social. With these platforms, you will not have to calculate engagement rates and other KPIs. Instead, you’ll be able to find them on a spreadsheet.
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