As you build an online presence for your boutique, you might find it challenging to track the overall value and impact of social media for your brand. The social media space is constantly changing, with new networks and shifting algorithms making it difficult to keep your online presence cutting edge. This is especially true if you’re a small business without a dedicated social media manager or support from an advertising agency.

To track the success of your social media campaigns, you can use a variety of metrics known as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). As your business grows, you’ll dig deeper into social media and discover that there are countless KPIs to consider. If you’re just starting to build an online following for your boutique, here are five essential metrics that can help you better understand your social media performance.

 

Follower Count: Let’s start with the basics. If your brand accounts don’t have a strong base of followers, you’ll have a difficult time gaining traction on social media. A growing number of followers means that your posts have a higher chance of being seen—and a higher chance of attracting the interactions that lead to sales. However, follower count is far from the most important metric when it comes to social media; a better indicator of success is how engaged your followers are with your brand.

Engagement: Once you’ve managed to build a strong following, the next step toward social media success is fostering engagement. Engagement can take a number of different forms depending on the social media platform at hand. Followers engage with your social media content when they like, comment, retweet, share a post, mention your boutique, or click a link. In these ways, they help to build a community around your brand and make your content visible to their own social media networks—a key component of continuing growth. To foster engagement, make sure you’re sharing high-quality content with questions or actionable CTAs that encourage your followers to do more than simply scroll past.

Conversion Rate: Once a customer has engaged by clicking a link on social media, the next step toward success is conversion. Conversion rate represents the percentage of visitors to your site who end up making a purchase. To effectively measure conversion, track your social media links using Google Analytics, an incredibly powerful tool that helps to chart the journey from social media to sales. The most prominent conversion metric is sales, but other actions that don’t directly generate revenue can also be tracked as types of conversions. You can measure the success of a social media campaign that “converts” customers when they take other actions to interact with your boutique—like signing up for your email list, downloading a coupon, or completing a survey.

ROI: After you’ve started to see your conversion rates rise, the next metric to consider is ROI—the abbreviation for return on investment. This metric measures how efficiently your advertising dollars are working for you. If your social media campaigns include paid ads, ROI can be a relatively straightforward comparison of ad spend versus revenue attributed to clickthroughs from that ad. However, some returns on investment are less tangible. You may invest in visual assets like high-quality photography and graphic design, or hire an experienced social media manager to help get your boutique’s online presence off the ground. Actions like these may be rewarded in the form of new followers and stronger engagement—metrics with value that extends beyond the strictly monetary.

Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is one of the few social media metrics where you want to see low numbers. This metric refers to the number of visitors who click through to your site from a social post, then leave the site immediately without visiting another page. If you’re seeing a high bounce rate, it may mean that the content you’re linking to isn’t engaging your customers—or that you’re not offering enough options for further navigation. To lower your bounce rate and encourage customers to browse more pages in your online boutique, use social media to direct visitors to landing pages with lots of navigation options and strong CTAs that entice them to explore.

 

How do you make the most of your online presence? Share your tips for social media success in the comments!