Metrics

When we speak of metrics, in the context of social media, we refer to those measurable data points and statistics and performance indicators that we use to evaluate and analyze and track the kinds of successful, effective, and far-reaching social media activities, campaigns, and strategies we might run across different platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, TikTok, and others. These give us a good quantifiable idea of what user behavior is really like, how our audience is engaging with us, how well our content is performing, and what's the overall impact of our brand or personal mandates as we co-occupy this space called 'social media. ' Some common social media metrics of the not-so-distant past have included the likes, comments, shares, and retweets we receive.

More recently, however, as the content we can produce across these different platforms has multiplied, so too have the opportunities we've had to engage our audience using this new content. This has pushed us to use some more advanced social media metrics. For instance, are we even measuring what needs to be measured for our type of campaign?

This is a 'how to' that requires organizations and individuals to have a present understanding of their platform algorithms, the type of audience they might cohabitate with on a platform, the kind of content that is working for them on that platform, the type of objectives they might have for being on that platform, and their health (organization or individual) as a 'cohabiter' on that platform, particularly if we're being outweighed by our competition. Who wants to stay cohabitating in a space when it ain't healthy for us? Yet, we ensure healthy lives by way of platform algorithms and using the different circle tools and the line/point/curvilinear vision tools at our disposal.