How to Measure Social Media Success? Insights and Tips from Industry Expert

Monday morning. Coffee in hand. You open your social media dashboard and there it is. A wall of numbers. Likes up. Reach down. Comments many, but sentiment unclear. 

And the big question hits you. Is this actually working, or are you just winging it on social media?

I’ve been there. Posting consistently, celebrating spikes, stressing over dips, and still not being able to say with confidence whether social media marketing was driving real results or just looking good on slides.

That’s exactly why this guide exists. Measuring social media success is about knowing what to track, why it matters, and how it connects back to real business outcomes.

To make this more insightful, I chatted with Mya Shell, senior social media manager at Quill. She brings powerful insights from her experience helping brands reach millions of views and followers on social.

Why you should track social media success?

Shooting arrows in the dark when it comes to social media? One or two may hit the target. But if you want to consistently get results, you need to keep measuring how you’re performing.

Here are five reasons we recommend measuring success of social media.

• Connect social media performance to business objectives: If social media is not tied to a business goal, it’s just content for content’s sake. Tracking success forces alignment. If your goal is leads, you track clicks and conversions, not applause in the form of likes. If retention matters, you look at saves, comments, and repeat engagement. 

Measurement turns ‘we think this works’ into ‘this drives revenue,’ and that shift changes how seriously social media is taken across the company.

• Optimize content strategy based on data: Data shows you what to double down on and what to quietly retire. Instead of guessing, you can see patterns. Hooks that work. Formats that flop. Topics your audience actually cares about. 

Tracking lets you tweak timing, captions, visuals, and formats based on evidence.

Even Mya mentioned this as one of the biggest benefits of tracking success. She said:

Being present on social media is an important first step, but presence alone does not equal measurable impact. For brands, real value comes from consistently tracking and analyzing performance to understand whether their efforts are actually driving results.

Measuring social media success enables brands to learn what content resonates, identify what underperforms, and make informed adjustments along the way. This ongoing process of analysis and experimentation transforms social media from a ‘nice-to-have’ activity into a strategic growth channel, one that can be optimized, scaled, and clearly communicated to stakeholders.

• Benchmark performance against competitors and industry standards: Your numbers mean nothing in isolation. A 2% engagement rate sounds decent until you realize competitors average 5%. Benchmarking adds context and urgency. It helps you answer, ‘Are we winning, average, or invisible?’ 

Industry benchmarks also stop unrealistic expectations. Not every niche goes viral daily. Tracking benchmarks keeps goals grounded, competitive, and strategic instead of emotional reactions to random spikes.

• Helps you track the right metrics: Tracking success forces clarity on what actually matters. Without it, teams obsess over vanity metrics because they’re easy to see. With it, you prioritize metrics that reflect intent and impact. 
• Justify budget, tools, and team investment: Data is your best defense in budget conversations. In my experience, ‘Social feels important’ rarely unlocks more resources. ‘Social drove 28% of demo signups last quarter’ does. Tracking success lets you prove ROI, justify better tools, and argue for headcount with confidence.

How to measure social media success in 5 steps?

Here’s a step-by-step process for how to measure social media effectiveness.

Step 1: Define what social media success means for your business

Before you open a dashboard to check on your metrics, pause and answer one question. What progress does my team or company expect social media to deliver right now?

Social media success is contextual. It depends on what the business needs at this moment, not on what metrics look impressive. Your goal becomes the filter for every decision that follows.

Social media is commonly expected to help with:

• Help people discover and recognize our brand
• Show leadership that our work is paying off
• Engage our audience consistently
• Support campaigns, launches, or sales
• Increase sales and revenue

Once you’re clear on which of these matters most right now, everything else gets simpler. 

Mya talked about having only one primary goal when measuring success. She said:

I think a really common issue is that social teams are asked to grow the account, drive conversions, engage everyone, and build a community all at the same time. All of those things are great, but they’re different goals, and each one comes with a different strategy. A lot of the time, those strategies can even conflict, which ends up splitting your effort and making things more complicated and confusing.

That’s why I think it’s important to have a clear primary goal. Maybe right now it’s growth. And then layer in secondary goals like conversions or community building. When you know what the main focus is, it becomes much easier to align your content, push people through the funnel, and actually understand what success looks like and how to measure it.

Step 2: Choose metrics based on your goal

Once the goal is clear, metrics stop being overwhelming and start being useful. I use one simple rule. If a metric does not connect to the goal, it does not earn a spot on the dashboard.

Different goals need different signals. When I’m focused on brand awareness, I look at reach, impressions, and follower growth. When engagement is the priority, I care about comments, saves, shares, and whether the same people keep interacting. 

Mya follows a similar process for selecting social media success metrics. She said:

 I usually look at metrics as either nice-to-haves or actually useful. Nice-to-haves are good to include in reports, but they don’t always line up with your goals. Useful metrics are the ones that help you prove you’re reaching those goals and help you make decisions — what to do more of, less of, or differently. If a metric doesn’t influence your strategy or give you better context, then it’s probably not that useful.

This is how I avoid vanity metrics too. Big numbers may look impressive, but they don’t necessarily drive decisions.

Step 3: Track trends instead of absolute numbers

Absolute numbers are loud, but they’re rarely helpful. A post getting 10,000 impressions sounds great until you realize it’s down 40% from last month’s average. That’s why I focus on trends for the selected metrics.

Even stakeholders don’t want raw numbers. They want a clear answer to one question. Are we moving in the right direction?

Here’s what to measure then:

• Month-over-month or quarter-over-quarter changes to understand momentum
• Performance by content pillar or format to spot what’s compounding
• Before-and-after comparisons for campaigns, launches, or strategy shifts

Third-party social media analytics tools like Socialinsider also help, as they showcase most metrics in graphs, allowing you to track social media performance over time.

Step 4: Run a competitor and industry analysis to set benchmarks

Before I draw conclusions, I like to put my numbers in context. On their own, metrics can be misleading. A 3% engagement rate feels solid until you realize your competitors are averaging 6%. Benchmarking answers the uncomfortable but necessary questions.

• How does our engagement rate compare to others in our industry?
• Are we growing faster or slower than direct competitors?
• Which content formats or pillars perform best across the market?

This is where competitor analysis tools shine. 

In Socialinsider, I can instantly compare my performance against competitors. All I need to do is add all competitor profiles and go to the Benchmarks tab.

I get a quick analysis and a head-to-head comparison for all important metrics.

Not only that, I can compare my performance to the industry average to see where I am outperforming the market and falling behind.

I liked how Mya talked about competitor analysis being really useful if you conduct it the right way. Here’s what she had to say:

Competitor analysis can be really helpful for understanding what’s happening in your industry, as long as you look at it through the right lens. You don’t always know what’s going on behind the scenes: how many resources a competitor has or what their exact goals are, so direct comparisons can be tricky.

But where it really adds value is in the context it provides. You can see what topics or formats are performing well, what hasn’t worked, and where there might be gaps or opportunities to try something new.

Even looking at similarly sized accounts can be useful. For example, if they’re consistently getting around 50 likes per post and you’re getting closer to 25, that tells you there’s an audience there, they’re just not on your page yet. Used this way, competitor analysis becomes less about comparison and more about learning, ideas, and identifying opportunities.

Step 5: Analyze metrics and optimize your social media strategy

Tracking social media metrics is useless if nothing changes after. This is where analysis turns into action. I always create a final performance report that shows two things clearly. Where social media is delivering real results and where it’s falling short?

From there, optimization becomes structured. I outline next steps using three simple questions:

• What should we do more of? Double down on formats, topics, or platforms that consistently drive results.
• What should we stop or adjust? Cut underperforming content, fix weak hooks, or rethink posting frequency.
• What should we test next? New formats, fresh CTAs, different posting times, or experimental content pillars.

How to measure success based on different success goals?

Different success goals will mean tracking different metrics. Here’s a preliminary list of metrics based on your chosen goal.

Success for awareness goals

Trying to make your brand more visible? Here are the metrics I would track:

• Reach: Reach tells you how many new people actually saw your content. Not how many times it appeared, but how many real humans it touched. This is your top-of-funnel signal. Track it to understand discovery. If reach is flat, you are talking to the same crowd. 

I track this growth in Socialinsider.

Action tip: Analyze which formats and hooks consistently expand reach and replicate those patterns instead of posting more often.

• Impressions: Impressions show how often your content is displayed, including repeat views. High impressions with low reach usually means your content is circulating within the same audience. This metric helps you understand visibility and content frequency. 

Action tip: If impressions are high but social media engagement metrics are low, tighten your messaging or refresh visuals to avoid audience fatigue.

• Follower growth rate: Instead of focusing on follower count, I believe follower growth rate gives you more direction. It shows whether awareness efforts are compounding over time. 

Action tip: Track growth rate monthly, not daily. Sudden spikes often tie back to specific content or campaigns. 

• Profile visits: Profile visits indicate curiosity. Someone saw your content and wanted to know more. That’s awareness moving one step deeper. I especially track this to understand which posts drive intent. 

Action tip: Review posts with high profile visits and low follows. Your bio, highlights, or pinned content may need clearer positioning.

• Frequency of brand mentions or tags: Mentions and tags show active recall. People recognize your brand. But they are taking it one step further and talking about it. That’s strong awareness. Track this to measure brand resonance. 

Action tip: Monitor what content or campaigns trigger mentions and build more conversation-led posts that invite tagging, sharing, or community participation.

Success for engagement goals

Looking to get your audience to engage with your content? Here are some social metrics you should track.

• Engagement rate: Engagement rate tells you how compelling your content actually is relative to how many people see it. This is your quality check. A high reach post with low engagement is noise. 

Action tip: Compare engagement rate by format and topic. Double down on the combinations that consistently outperform your average.

• Comments per post: Comments signal depth of interaction. A like is passive. A comment means someone paused, thought, and responded. 

Mya mentioned that as people choose to silently consume content on social media, comments become an even more important signal of engagement.  

As engagement becomes more scarce across platforms, comments are one of the clearest signals of active consumption. A comment shows more intent than a passive scroll or a quick view. It means someone stopped, thought about the content, and chose to respond. Especially when comments go beyond emojis, they indicate real interest and attention in a space where most users are increasingly just lurking. That’s why comments remain such a meaningful form of engagement, even as overall interaction becomes harder to earn.

Action tip: Audit your top-comment posts and look at the question, opinion, or hook used. Borrow that structure intentionally instead of hoping engagement happens.

• Shares per post: Shares show advocacy. People only share content that reflects well on them or feels useful to others. I track shares to see what my audience finds worth spreading. 

Action tip: Look for patterns. Educational explainers, templates, and strong opinions usually win here. You can even turn high-share posts into a recurring series.

• Average watch time or retention: Watch time reveals whether your content holds attention past the hook. This matters more than views. Mya tracks retention to see where viewers drop off and what she can do to improve content further.

Watch time gives really meaningful insight, like where people dropped off or the moment they engaged, which helps you understand what’s working and what’s not. If you see most viewers leaving a few seconds before the end, you know the video could have been shorter. If people are liking the video early on, you can look at what was happening in those first few seconds and apply that to future content.

Action tip: identify the second where most viewers leave and tighten that moment. Strong openings and faster pacing often improve retention instantly.

• Repeat engagement from the same users: Repeat engagement shows loyalty. It means your content is becoming a habit. Track this to understand audience stickiness. 

Action tip: Nurture these users with consistent themes and callbacks. Familiarity builds trust and keeps people coming back.

Success for lead generation goals

If you’re trying to increase leads from your social efforts, here are the metrics you should include to measure success.

• Click-through rate (CTR): CTR shows whether your content motivates action. People saw the post and chose to click. Track CTR to test how strong your hook, CTA, and offer really are. 

Mya mentioned this as one of the most important metrics for lead generation and talked about how social media managers can track it.

If the goal is to generate leads, the most important metrics are click-through rate and landing page conversion rate. Those aren’t metrics you really get directly from most social platforms, which is where things start to get more complex. Measuring lead generation usually means tracking what happens off social, how people move from a post to a landing page and what they do once they’re there.

That often requires working with website teams, using link-in-bio tools, or adding UTMs to links to understand where traffic is coming from. It’s definitely trickier to measure, especially for small social teams, but it’s also a sign of leveling up in social media management because it shows you’re able to track real movement down the funnel beyond just on-platform metrics.

Action tip: Compare CTR by copy style and CTA language. Small wording changes often outperform new creatives.

• Landing page traffic from social media: This metric tells you if social is doing its job as a traffic driver. Track it to see which platforms and content types send qualified visitors. 

Action tip: Tag links properly and review bounce rates. High traffic with low engagement usually means a message mismatch between post and page.

• Content downloads or form fills: Downloads and form fills indicate intent. Someone traded attention for information. 

Action tip: Map which posts drive the most completions and reuse that framing for future gated content promotions.

• Email sign-ups: Email sign-ups are a strong lead signal because they extend the relationship beyond social. I track this to understand trust and value perception. 

Action tip: Test content upgrades or platform-specific offers instead of generic sign-up CTAs to improve conversion.

• Leads attributed to social media campaigns: This is the bottom-line metric. Track it to connect social activity directly to pipeline impact. 

Action tip: Review lead quality, not just count. Fewer high-intent leads beat high volumes of unqualified ones every time.

Success for conversion goals

You generated a lot of leads. That’s great. But what if your stakeholders are more concerned with conversion of those leads? These are the metrics that will help you make a strong case.

• Conversion rate from social traffic: This tells you how efficiently social traffic turns into customers or sign-ups. It’s not about how many people arrive, but how many actually act. 

Action tip: Compare conversion rate by platform and campaign. If one channel converts better with less traffic, prioritize it instead of chasing volume.

• Sign-ups generated from social: Sign-ups show direct intent driven by social content. This is where awareness and engagement finally pay off. Track this to see which posts and offers move people to commit. 

Action tip: Tag sign-ups by campaign or content theme so you know exactly what messaging converts best.

• Cost per conversion: This metric shows efficiency. How much are you spending to get one conversion, even when organic supports paid? I track it to avoid overinvesting in expensive channels. 

Action tip: Review cost per conversion monthly and reallocate budget toward platforms or formats that consistently deliver lower costs.

• Revenue attributed to social media: I call this the credibility metric. It ties social directly to money earned. Track it to understand real business impact. 

Action tip: Focus on revenue trends, not one-off wins. Consistent contribution matters more than viral spikes that don’t convert.

• Return on investment (ROI): ROI answers the ultimate question. Is social worth it? Track this to justify spend, tools, and team investment. 

Action tip: Calculate ROI quarterly, not weekly. Social performance compounds over time, and short-term calculation often understate its value.

Success for community-building goals

Building a strong community on Instagram or LinkedIn? Here’s how you can check the success of that goal.

• Engagement rate: For community building, engagement rate shows how alive your audience is, not how big it is. Track it to see whether people consistently interact with your content. 

Action tip: Watch engagement rate on recurring posts or series. Communities respond better to familiar formats.

• Number of comments, replies, and shares: This metric reflects conversation. By tracking them together, I can understand how interactive my community really is. 

Action tip: Respond publicly and quickly. Active brand participation often increases future comments organically.

• Volume and tone of mentions: Mentions show whether people think of your brand and are willing to talk about it to others. Tone tells you how they feel about it. Track both to measure trust and sentiment. 

Action tip: Look for recurring language in positive mentions and mirror it in your content and messaging.

• Participation in campaigns or hashtags: This shows whether your audience wants to be part of something bigger than a single post. Track participation to measure collective action. 

Action tip: spotlight user contributions. Recognition fuels participation and strengthens community bonds.

How to optimize your strategies to reach social media success?

Now that you know which metrics to measure, here are five strategies to help you reach social media success faster.

• Scale successful campaigns and top-performing content: When I see a campaign or post perform well, I treat it as a starting point. I look at what exactly worked. The angle, the hook, the format, the timing. 

Socialinsider helps make this easy with their top-performing content feature.

Then I scale it by extending the idea into a series, adapting it for other platforms, or revisiting it with a new lens. Momentum compounds when you build on proven wins instead of constantly chasing new ideas.

• Double down on high-performing content pillars: Over time, patterns always emerge. Certain themes consistently outperform others. Instead of manually calculating the engagement for each pillar, let Socialinsider do that for you.

When that happens, rebalance the content mix. High-performing pillars should get more space and more experimentation. This keeps the social media strategy focused and audience-first.

• Optimize hooks, visuals, and captions based on performance data: Every post is feedback. I study which hooks stop the scroll, which visuals hold attention, and which captions drive action. 

Mya talked about doing the same. She said:

If people make it past the first few seconds, you know your hook caught their attention. But captions and CTAs are just as important. When you ask people to comment, share, or take a specific action in the caption or at the end of a carousel, and they actually do it, that’s a clear signal of success. It shows the content was engaging enough to get them to the end and clear enough to prompt action.

Being able to tie your hook and your caption back to the goal of the post, whether that’s getting follows, positioning yourself as an educator, or driving conversation, makes it much easier to evaluate if the content was structured in a way that actually achieved that goal.

• Refine posting cadence and timing using trend data: I stopped assuming more posts meant better results. Instead, I track when engagement peaks and how performance shifts with frequency. Patterns show when the audience is most responsive and when content fatigue sets in. Adjusting cadence and timing based on real trends improves reach and engagement without increasing workload.
• Always keep an eye on what’s working in your industry: Watching which formats, topics, and narratives gain traction in your industry helps you adapt faster. It highlights rising expectations and shifting audience behavior. Staying aware keeps the strategy competitive and prevents falling behind.

Final thoughts

Measuring social media success starts with clarity. When you know what progress looks like, the right metrics become obvious and decisions become faster. Track what aligns with your goals, review performance regularly, and focus on trends that show real movement. Use benchmarks to stay grounded and competitive. 

You can even use social media analytics tools like Socialinsider to quickly get insights on what’s working and what you can improve to achieve your goals. Try our 14-day free trial of Socialinsider.

FAQs on how to measure social media success

How to measure social media campaign success?

To measure social media campaign success, start by defining the campaign goal. Brand awareness, engagement, leads, or conversions. Track metrics that directly support that goal, not everything available. Compare results against benchmarks and past campaigns. Focus on trends, not spikes. Then evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and how results tied back to business impact.

How often should you measure social media success metrics?

You should measure social media success metrics regularly, but not obsessively. Review core metrics weekly to spot issues early. Analyze trends monthly to understand what’s improving or declining. Run deeper quarterly reviews to assess strategy, benchmarks, and business impact. Different cadences serve different decisions.