Which Social Media Metrics Should You Ignore?

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How to Safely Ignore Metrics and Get a More Accurate Picture

The term “vanity metrics” has made its way into the marketing lexicon recently, and for good reason. What many use to measure “results” can frequently be misleading and because of this, it’s worth taking a look at some of the marketing metrics you could (and probably should!) ignore.

Here are a few you can safely ignore:

  • Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers and LinkedIn Connections – Whoever has the bigger numbers wins, correct? If only. The truth is, more virtual bodies following you translates to better conversions only if you are actively engaging with them, and building a relationship. Having tons of likes or followers who never make the transition to customers is essentially pointless.
  • Comments – Again, with the goal being to increase conversion,  merely generating a blog post that titillates and creates a large number of comments, but generates no leads, is a waste of a blog post. Make the reason they comment have something to do with leading them further down the path toward conversion, such as a topical question.
  • Impressions – Mainly used in your advertising, the sheer number of ad impressions is relatively useless, as it does not indicate any measurable action. Simply having your ad display in front of a couple of million computer screens is no real measure of how it performs. Rather, take a look at click-thru rates and conversion rates.

More on this subject can be found at HubSpot.

Metrics you’ll need to keep an eye on:

  • Shares of your content – While this is not a concrete statistic, getting your content shared in whatever form is a step in the right direction. This means that that your content making an impression (the right kind!) and is being shared around.
  • Social mentions and citations – Seeing that Google is now integrating social signals and citations into the search algorithm, this is an element that is very helpful. This aids your website in search, along with authority.
  • Conversions – The endgame. You must make sure that your social media and sharable content is ultimately resulting in more conversions.

Read more about this at Mashable.