posting on social media? here are metrics you should be paying attention to

I thought I was getting into marketing to use my creative brain, but now I'm whipping out my calculator to do some division. Instagram metrics are essential when understanding how your content is performing and which strategies resonate with your audience. TL;DR to know what is working, you just understand your metrics.

Ahywho, here are the 4 metrics you need to understand and follow:

1. follower growth rate

The follower growth rate is simple: it shows how quickly your Instagram account is gaining or losing followers. This can show you how your Instagram strategy is performing, and whether or not your target audience is being reached. When tracking follower growth rate, make sure you look at both overall followers and net follower growth rate.

The net follower growth rate is a number of new followers you’ve gained minus any you might have lost. For reference, a good follower growth rate will be anywhere from 2.5% and 5%. 

2. reach rate

This tells you the number of people who have seen your post. You may be thinking that the reach rate sounds a lot like impressions but they are actually different! Reach focuses on the number of people seeing it, instead of how many times the person saw it (if a person views your post 3 times, it still counts as one reach and 3 impressions).

To calculate the reach rate, divide the total reach of a post by the total number of followers. A good benchmark for reach is 12% for posts, and 2% for stories. 

3. engagement by follower

Engagement by followers measures the average number of times each of your follower's interact with your content–meaning the higher the number, the better.

To calculate engagement by followers, take the total number of engagements on your account and dividing it by the total number of followers you have. Then, multiply that number by 100 to get a percentage. A good benchmark for engagement by followers is an average of 1-3%. 

4. engagement by reach

This is the percentage of people who have seen your content or engaged with it in some way (and these accounts don’t have to be following you to gain this metric). This is a great way for you to gauge how people that don't know about your brand are responding to your content!

To calculate engagement by reach, divide your total engagement rate by the number of followers your content reached. Then, multiply that by 100 to get a percentage. A good benchmark for engagement by reach is anything about 5%. 

whew–I threw a lot at you!

I know that seems like a lot to remember and keep up with (and who knew there was this much math included in marketing?) but these metrics are a helpful way to understand if your social strategy is working or if it needs to be adjusted. 

Thankfully, if you work with us, you don’t have to worry about any of that–we invest in a customizable analytics platform that calculates all of these (and more) and tracks our success!

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