Content Engagement Metrics

These metrics give a look into the effectiveness, resonance, and impact of a post, video, story, or other types of content, and they also give businesses, marketers, influencers, and individuals a means to assess quite well their content performs and how engaged their audience is with the material they are sharing.

Metrics of engagement generally comprise actions like these: users click on links embedded in the content; they visit the profiles of the people or organizations that created the content; and they react in various ways, such as by liking, commenting, or pinning. More and more, users interact with content through video, which now dominates social media. ('Engagement and Views on Social Media')

One of the most essential signs of success on social media—if not the most essential—are likes. Of course, likes say a lot about how much interaction a post gets. But they also speak to something much bigger: the 'like-ability' of a post. And when I say 'like-ability,' I don't just mean that a post could elicit a casual 'like' if someone happens to see it in their feed. I mean that a post is worthy of a like in the context of what we call social media strategy.

Engagement at a high level typically indicates that the content connects in a significant way with the audience or spurs on some serious interactions, which in turn can help it go viral by way of all the algorithms that keep track of what posts are worth pushing in front of more eyeballs.

These measures are particularly vital for influencers, brands, and marketers who are trying to build a stronger rapport with their targeted demographic and turn eyeballs into actual results. What kinds of actual results, you might ask? Well, they're looking for anything from increased web traffic to more leads to more sales to a greater percentage of their audience being loyal to the brand in question.

Reaching people and making an impression on them are good, but it's even better when they actively participate and interact with our content. That is what engagement is all about. When we get someone to engage with us, it's a sign that we've nearly crossed the threshold into forming a real relationship with them—one fueled by whatever kind of content we're creating.

Analytic tools that these various social media platforms provide often help us keep a close watch over these important numbers. They allow us to see what’s happening in slow motion, practically frame by frame, so we can adjust our strategy in a way that optimizes our content and guides our posting to be better in line with what our audience prefers and how they behave.