Social media metrics that matter, and where to find them

Watch reach, engagement rate and clicks for every post; follower growth for every account; and watch time for video. Compare each with your own previous period, not with someone else's account. Read them per network and per campaign, and change one thing at a time based on what they say.

Each answers a different question:

Engagement rate is the reactions divided by the people who saw the post. In SPREVA it is likes, comments, shares and saves divided by reach; where a network does not report reach, impressions, and then views. Each rate says what it was divided by, as in "of reach", so you never compare two rates built on different bases without knowing.

The rate is what lets you compare a post seen by 300 people with one seen by 30,000. Raw likes favour whatever happened to reach more people; the rate tells you which one people actually cared about.

Some numbers feel good and say little:

• Likes on their own. They grow with reach; without the rate, a bigger audience looks like a better post.
• Followers on their own. A follower who never sees your posts is worth less than a reader who saves every one.
• Views of video that plays by itself. A view can be a second of scrolling past; watch time says whether anyone stayed.
• One good day. A single post can travel by luck. Look at four weeks before you change what you do.

Analytics brings every connected account into one view, with five tabs:

• Overview: views, reach, likes, comments, shares and clicks, each against the previous period, with views per publishing day, the platforms, the accounts and your Best content.
• Posts: every post with its numbers, to sort and compare.
• Growth: followers across the accounts you select, and each account's start, end and change.
• Engagement: the engagement rate, with saves and the rest of the reactions.
• Video: watch time and the average watched per view.

Choose the last 7, 30 or 90 days or your own dates, and compare with the previous period or the previous month. Narrow the view by account, by platform or by campaign, so a launch is judged against launches and Instagram against Instagram. A dash means the network does not report that number; a zero means it reported zero.

SPREVA reads each post's numbers an hour after it goes out, then after 6 hours, a day, 3 days, a week and a month, so you see both the first day and the long tail. Follower counts are read every day. When you need a post's numbers now, open it and press Refresh metrics.

Not every network shares numbers with apps. Discord, Telegram, Slack, Twitch, Kick, Medium, WordPress and Google Business Profile report none, so for them SPREVA shows whether each post went out. Reddit and a few others report each post's numbers but not your followers.

Numbers are only worth reading if they change what you do next:

• Make more of what wins. Look at Best content each month: the format, the subject and the network that keep coming back.
• Test one thing at a time, such as your posting time, with two campaigns side by side. The best time to post is yours: how to find it with your own numbers.
• Report the month to your team or a client, with the CSV export of the same view. How to send a client a monthly social media report.

Or ask an AI agent connected to SPREVA to read them for you:

Connect your accounts, open Analytics, compare the last 30 days with the 30 before, and write down one thing to change. Every plan starts with a 7-day trial.