How can I measure KPIs on social media?

Social media KPIs: what they're for

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential for knowing whether we're progressing positively or negatively on our social media. If you don't measure something, you don't know whether you're doing it better or worse. Measuring KPIs and ROI is fundamental to your marketing plan and should be integrated with your social media strategy and your content strategy to improve engagement and communication with your target audience.

Even so, you shouldn't monitor or measure everything constantly.

First: because social media, the way it organizes information (algorithms), and people's patterns work more on a medium-to-long term.

Second: because information saturation or excessive concern over data can negatively affect the quality of the work on social media, making the results even worse.

Even so, these are some interesting KPIs worth following on a regular basis:

Follower growth

How much social media accounts have gained or lost, expressed as a percentage or an absolute number.

Obviously, a positive number or percentage of growth is a good sign. If it's negative, it's because some action by the content on social media, the brand in general, or external factors has damaged the account's image: causing unfollows. From growing too little, too much, bad press...

There are other situations where this can happen. Temporary accounts (for example, a summer concert) can experience spikes of many followers and losses shortly after it ends. What matters is that from summer to summer it keeps improving.

The growth rate (percentage) is highly variable. Small accounts can grow a lot from a single mention; large ones not so much. What matters is that it grows in a healthy way, respecting other KPIs like engagement or content quality.

Engagement rate

The ratio between the number of interactions on a post and its number of views or impressions.

It's an indicator of both the audience's interest in the content and its interactivity in general. Gamers, for example, who use several screens or devices and interact little. Or, for example, a video that invites comments or reactions will raise the ratio a lot.

Adjusted engagement rate

Engagement multiplied by an audience and sector coefficient.

Engagement varies enormously depending on the audience. As users get older they usually have higher engagement. By contrast, gamer profiles or people who use social media regularly have lower engagement. A small child may not even register what's being said in an ad meant for them because their attention shifts constantly.

We call adjusted engagement the result of multiplying engagement by an adjustment coefficient, which varies by sector based on our experience.

The table of coefficients is private, and we've spent 5 years measuring and tweaking the parameters until we got it exact. Its usefulness is great when comparing the performance of different audiences or sectors.

Directed traffic / CTA

The percentage of users who take a specific action the profile asks for.

If, for example, we ask our audience to follow us on another account, visit our website, or buy our product: we have a call to action (CTA). The percentage of people who do what we've asked is the indicator.

It's really our relationship with our audience in its purest form. Can we persuade? The more you ask, the fewer people will do it. Whether it's viewing something or buying a product, it will vary a lot across users.

Audience retention

The percentage of the total time a user has watched your post.

How much of our post the audience has watched. In the case of an image it's not common. In a video it is, and that information is usually provided in the analytics section of the social network (like YouTube Analytics).

Attention rates above 50% are usually positive, and if they drop a lot at the beginning it means we didn't grab enough attention. By contrast, if they drop at some other point in the video, it means that moment is boring or bad.

Designing with a good audience-retention strategy would mean placing all our resources and objectives at a moment where the vast majority of people will see them.

For example, in an ad, putting a CTA in the first 2 minutes of the video rather than right at the end.

KPIs and ROI on social media

Measuring social media KPIs and returns on investment is a complex thing. This is because social media is one piece of a larger machine, with several variables (web, email, offline sales, branding, etc.). Even so, you can design trackable experiments:

• Campaigns with URLs tagged via UTM to see which visits and conversions come from each network.
• Comparing periods with and without specific campaigns on social media.
• Connecting web analytics events (forms submitted, leads, sales) with specific traffic sources.

For a more complete view, you can combine these KPIs with concepts explained in the guide on what a KPI is and the most relevant ones in marketing.

Quick FAQ on social media KPIs

How many KPIs should I measure at once?
It depends on the size of your project, but it's usually enough to focus on 3–5 well-defined key indicators rather than tracking dozens of metrics without context.

How often should I review the KPIs?
For social media, a weekly or biweekly review is usually a good starting point, complemented by more strategic monthly analyses.

Are KPIs the same for all networks?
Not exactly. Some are shared (growth, engagement), but others change by format (for example, video retention on YouTube vs. on Instagram stories).

Measure what matters, not everything

Measuring social media KPIs helps you understand what works, what doesn't, and where to adjust your strategy — but only if you choose well which indicators to follow.

By focusing on a few relevant KPIs and connecting, when possible, that data with ROI, you'll be able to make more informed decisions and progressively improve your social media results.