7 key metrics to check brand efficiency in social media

Promoting your brand in a social media environment is a great idea. However, each strategy requires a thorough review. How to evaluate the efficiency of your promotion approach? Marketers highlight seven key metrics that help assess your brand’s efficiency across social media, track its dynamics, and adjust the strategy as needed.

1. Reach

Reach reflects the total count of unique users who viewed your content (stories, video, or articles). This metric helps evaluate a brand’s recognition level and ensures whether social media algorithms promote your content. Low reach indicates that your content is not relevant enough. As a result, it receives no response or is outperformed in the feed.

Pay attention to:

• Earlier posts’ reach dynamics.
• The disparity in reach between content formats. For example, between Reels, live streams, stories, and image carousels.
• Ratio of reach to follower count (ideally, reach should be higher).

2. Engagement Rate

The engagement rate (ER) indicates whether your audience is actively interacting with the content. This includes likes, reposts, saves, comments, and taps. Why is this metric so meaningful? It reflects a genuine interest and emotional response from your audience, showing whether the content is really engaging. You can have a large number of subscribers, but low ER shows the low efficiency of the content. It simply doesn’t evoke any emotions. How to calculate the ER correctly? Use the following formula:

(Likes + Reposts + Saves + Comments) / Audience * 100%

3. Follower Growth

Follower growth is one more metric worth your attention. It shows both the speed and quality of your audience expansion. Follower growth helps to evaluate the results of content performance, reputational activities, and targeted advertising efficiency. What should be assessed firsthand? Pay attention to:

• Sources driving traffic (commercial partnerships, lead magnets, content).
• Organic growth vs advertising one.
• Ratio of new followers to unfollows.

4. Retention Rate

Retention rate (view time) indicates how long viewers stay engaged with your content. This metric helps to identify the possibility of the content to hold subscribers’ interest. In fact, this is a crucial performance indicator for short-form video formats. What should you analyze? Pay attention to:

• Structure performance. Is your content designed around the “hook – value – conclusion” storytelling framework?
• The second when the viewer usually leaves.
• Durability and dynamics of the content. Ensure if it needs to be changed.

5. Link Clicks

Link clicks demonstrate the audience’s willingness to continue the journey and transition beyond the platform. This metric is crucial for brands that rely on social platforms as a primary source of traffic to their landing page, Telegram channel, or marketplace. Ensure if:

• The Call-to-Action (CTA) blocks are attractive and efficient.
• The content complies with audience needs.
• The positioning and Unique Selling Proposition (USP) work well.

6. Mentions and UGC

Mentions and UGC (user-generated content) demonstrate the efficiency of your brand’s digital presence. It also shows how users engage with it beyond commercial communication. Think of this metric as the ultimate pulse check on how deeply your audience believes you. Creating content with the support of simple users or colleagues makes it more natural and credible. The examples of UGC include challenges, real cases, and unpacking videos.

7. Conversions

Conversion indicates whether your views and engagement have a chance to transform into real actions or purchases. Checking the conversion, pay attention to:

• Requests and purchases.
• Cart checkouts.
• Transitions to messengers.
• Downloading files.
• Signing up for consultations or other activities.
• Subscriptions for updates.

This is a meaningful business metric, showing real financial results of the social media promotion strategy.

Conclusion

Promote your products and services by regularly reviewing key metrics. You need to ensure that the strategy you are following aligns with users’ needs and your business goals. Focus on the seven offered metrics to optimize your content, strengthen users’ trust, enhance engagement, and improve sales results.