Social Media Stats Small Business Owners Should Actually Pay Attention To
There are a lot of stats you could be paying attention to when it comes to Instagram and social media in general and it can get a little overwhelming! Which ones are actually important to look at? Why? How do I measure what they mean practically for my business? This post will answer all those questions for you!
There are 4 main stats that I pay attention to and use to measure how well I am performing on social media…and they’re not necessarily what you would expect. I watch my engagement rate on Instagram, how my social media is affecting my email sign-ups, how many new leads I am receiving directly from social media, and how well I am connecting with others in the Instagram app. I’ll take a deeper look into each of these below.
Engagement Rate:
On Instagram, your engagement rate is the number of likes and comments on a post divided by the number of followers you have. Multiply that number by 100 and you get the percentage your post was engaged with on Instagram. Yeah, it sounds like a complicated math problem, but services like Planoly will find it for you so it really doesn’t have to be that complicated. The reason I like to pay attention to my engagement rate is because you showing up in your followers’ feeds depends on it! The higher your engagement rate, the better you perform in the algorithm. I don’t pay as much attention to how many individual likes and comments I get because it could look like a lot, but Instagram looks at it in relation to how many followers you have. So if you have 10k followers but get only a few likes and comments your account won’t perform as well as one that only has 1k followers who are very engaged (liking and commenting on your posts). If you’d like to read more about engagement rate check out this post.
Email Sign-ups:
I drive my email sign-ups through social media. Here’s the thing, social media is an awesome free platform for marketing your business, but you don’t own it. Instagram can crash, remove your account, or take away your followers anytime it wants. In order not to lose the audience I’ve built, I ask my followers to sign up for my email list (which I own). I created some super cool opt-ins (freebies) and I often point people to go grab them in exchange for their email. Every time I post about it on social media I watch my email sign-ups to see how many people followed the link to sign up. Getting my followers off of the Instagram app and onto my email list is a big win for me!
New Leads:
That’s right, I get a lot of my new leads directly from Instagram! I mean, that’s the whole purpose, right? For people to find your business on Instagram, then get to like, know and trust you via your posts and eventually to buy what you have to sell. So I do pay attention to how many new leads I gain that mark “referred from Instagram” on my lead form, and how many people DM me saying they found my account and would be interested in working together.
Connection:
Last, and most importantly, I measure my efforts on Instagram by how many real connections I make. This is most definitely the hardest “stat” to measure, but I’d hate to be an Instagram robot who thrives off of numbers but never makes any real connections! Even if I am not gaining new leads for my business, I am SO HAPPY when I can make lasting, real connections through this little app! When I can help someone figure out a problem they are having or brighten their day with a beautiful photo; when I can set up a meeting in real life with an Instagram friend, or recommend a great business for my followers to try, these are the things that I want from my time on Instagram…and while it’s not a traditional stat or even a very measurable thing, I ask myself often if I am making these connections and helping people via my online presence. I hope you will too!
