When crafting a professional Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram page, you may notice the startling amount of information they can provide you about how well you are performing on social media.

These insights, called social media metrics, provide a glimpse into which types of posts work best with your audience. Recognizing which are most helpful for your blog or business can quickly allow you to become a master on social media.

Being able to create content that your audience will love takes time. However, on your way to becoming proficient across all social media, make sure to look at several social media metrics that matter.

Some of what follows here will overlap with one another. For example, some of the social media metrics that work best on Facebook may also work well for Twitter. However, social media metrics are also platform-specific. Make sure to take note of the nuances in every social media platform to become skillful in promoting your blog or business online.

Facebook- Social Media Metrics

Facebook’s helpful business profiles offer social media managers some of the most comprehensive social media metrics.

If you click on the “Insights” tab you will be taken on a comprehensive journey throughout your Facebook business page to look at several key components.

At the top, you will be able to view your page likes (the number of unique people who like your page), your post reach (the total number of people who have seen anything associated with your page during the last seven days) and engagement (the total number of unique people who have liked, clicked, commented on or shared your posts in the past seven days).

While all three of these features are important, perhaps the most significant is engagement. A high engagement rate indicates that your fans like the content you are sharing. If one of your posts ranks highly in this department, it signals to Facebook’s algorithm to have it appear in more of your fans’ newsfeeds.

To see what posts perform well with your audience, Facebook offers you the chance to view your posts chronologically starting with the most recent first. If you click on the Posts tab, you will see detailed metrics for individual Facebook posts which will allow you to analyze which generated the most engagement.

Finally, Facebook provides information about the videos you post. You can see how engaging your videos are by tracking how long people watch it, its engagement and when the highest volume of people watched it.

Twitter- Social Media Metrics

On Twitter, you will find the following social media metrics: tweets, tweet impressions (the number of people that have seen your tweets), profile visits, mentions, followers and the number of tweets linking to you.

For individual tweets, Twitter offers a look at your engagement rate, link clicks (the amount of times people clicked on a link from your Twitter account), retweets, favorites and replies.

Overall, it is important to shoot for tweets that will inevitably lead to retweets or favorites. The best tweets are ones that allow your audience to share them with others.

Instagram- Social Media Metrics

While Instagram offers some helpful social media metrics, it does not provide as much as Twitter. If you use an Instagram business profile, you will be able to track impressions, reach, profile views, engagement and saved pictures (unique accounts that saved your posts).

Obviously, with Instagram one of the most important ways to track your progress is through how many people have liked your images. With Instagram Insights on a business profile, you will find a “top posts” section where you can see your top posts based on the metrics listed above.

LinkedIn- Social Media Metrics

When you log on to LinkedIn, you can click on the Analytics tab to learn more about your posts and audience.

LinkedIn Analytics offers you the chance to view impressions (the number of times your post was shown to LinkedIn members), clicks (the number of clicks on your content, company name or logo), interactions (the number of likes, comments and shares), followers (the number of followers you acquired when sponsoring an update) and engagement (the number of interactions divided by the number of impressions).

Like Facebook, while impressions on LinkedIn are important, you will want to track the number of clicks or interactions your posts have in order to see which ones are performing the best.

Pinterest- Social Media Metrics

The final social media platform we will cover is Pinterest. Like the other platforms described above, Pinterest tracks your impressions, viewers and top-rated pins. In the audience section, you will find metrics for your monthly viewers as well as the average monthly viewers who are engaged with your posts.

Tracking your top pins is the priority on Pinterest. You will want to ensure your pins are generating a positive response among your audience.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many ways of tracking social media metrics for all your business pages. The common theme through this information, though, remains the same: make sure you create content people will want to click on and learn more about! Ideally, they will then share it with those in their network too!