Social media metrics can really help you measure your success on social media platforms. However, most musicians don’t know what they are in the first place.
I hear you, how are you supposed to measure something that you have never heard about?
Right, that’s what this blog post is here for! First of all, you need to identify the platforms that mean the most to you. No matter if you are after support from fans, want to earn money or simply market your music.
You should always identify goals for each platform and what it should do for you. After all, as a musician, you always need to think about it a bit like a business person.
One goal could be how well your newest track is perceived. Also, how well is your branding doing?
Social media metrics can help determine the way you need to go in order to meet your goals as well as document the way you’ve already made.
This can be especially important if you want to reach out to music industry people in order to work with you. Perhaps you don’t have the massive following you would like on Instagram but the engagement rate is epic? That can all be super helpful information!
Important social media metrics to monitor
#1 Reach
The reach metric shows you how many individual people have seen your Instagram post, for example. Even if they look at the same post multiple times, it only counts as one.
For example, if you have 500 followers and each of them sees your content two times, your reach is still only 500
*source: rockcontent
This is important in order to understand how many people overall have been exposed to your content. If the reach is higher than your followership you know you could with more Call-To-Actions in order to get people to sign up. If your reach is lower than your followership you might need to work on your content or advertisement strategy.
#2 Audience growth rate, one of the most important social media metrics
This social media metric is one of my favourites. Here you can track how fast your audience is growing. Creating content in a professional way can take an awful lot of energy and time. What is more, it is so daunting to start a social media channel with literally zero followers.
You might think you never get enough followers to stop feeling embarrassed. However, only looking at the follower number itself can be misleading. Instead, check the audience growth rate.
This tells you the percentage with which your audience is growing. What is more, it allows you to set clear goals. For example, if you know your audience growth rate per month is 10% and you have 100 followers right now, then in 3 months you should have 130 followers.
In case you don’t meet this forecast you know you need to change something on your strategy. On the other hand, if you have more followers than predicted you might want to research why. This could give you clues on what works particularly well with your fanbase. Hence, do more of that!
#3 Engagement rate
This one is epic, it literally shows you how many comments, likes and shares your content receives.
The engagement rate is nothing you can easily see in your Insights or Analytics. You need to do a bit of math. But don’t worry it won’t be complicated. Just take your engagements and divide them by the reach number.
This is a very simplified version of the engagement rate calculation. However, it gives you a feeling of what to look out for.
Also, you need information in order to know if the engagement rate is actually good.
*source: scrunch
Less than 1% = low engagement rate
Between 1% and 3.5% = average/good engagement rate
Between 3.5% and 6% = high engagement rate
Above 6% = very high engagement rate
Clearly, there are so many more social media metrics to look out for than just reach, audience growth rate and engagement rate. However, it is a good start! Starting with two or three social media metrics and doing consistent tracking will get you really far. Once you are comfortable you can always add more social media metrics!