Social Media Performance Overview: Metrics That Actually Matter
Cut through vanity metrics to the social media KPIs that connect to business outcomes — reach, engagement, traffic, and revenue contribution by platform.
Vanity Metrics vs. Business Metrics
Social media platforms are designed to show you metrics that make you feel good about your content — likes, follower counts, impressions. These are called vanity metrics because they feel important but rarely correlate with business outcomes.
Business metrics for social media are different:
- Traffic from social — how many sessions on your website came from social channels?
- Conversion rate from social traffic — of those sessions, how many converted to purchase?
- Revenue attributed to social — total sales where social was a touchpoint in the attribution path
- CAC from social — cost per new customer acquired via social (paid and organic combined)
- Follower-to-buyer conversion rate — what % of your social followers have ever purchased?
Platform-Level Metrics Worth Tracking
Different platforms have different meaningful metrics:
TikTok: video completion rate (target: > 40%), profile visit rate from video (measures curiosity generated), add-to-cart from TikTok Shop link, comment sentiment.
Instagram: story reply rate (measures genuine engagement), link click rate from stories and bio link, Reel save rate (saves indicate content that viewers want to reference again — a strong intent signal), DM volume after content posts.
Pinterest: outbound click rate (Pinterest is a high-intent discovery platform — clicks to your site are valuable), monthly impressions growth (slower, longer-tail channel).
LinkedIn (for B2B): connection growth rate, post impressions among target job titles, inbound enquiries from content.
Tracking Social Performance in AskBiz
With your eCommerce platform and social channels connected, ask AskBiz:
- *'How much revenue was attributed to social channels last month?'*
- *'What percentage of my website traffic comes from TikTok vs Instagram?'*
- *'Compare the conversion rate of traffic from TikTok to traffic from Instagram over the last 90 days'*
- *'Which social post drove the highest traffic to my website this quarter?'*
For direct social commerce (TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping), AskBiz shows sales by platform and by product directly in your Channels dashboard.
Setting Social Media Targets
Effective social media targets connect to business goals:
❌ 'Grow Instagram followers by 10,000' — vanity target
✅ 'Generate £5,000/month in revenue attributed to Instagram' — business target
❌ 'Post 5 times per week' — activity target
✅ 'Maintain a 3% monthly growth in website traffic from social' — outcome target
Set 1–2 business-outcome targets per platform. Review monthly in AskBiz. Only increase posting frequency if it demonstrably improves the business outcome target — more content for its own sake is not the goal.