CHARLOTTE, NC – Business owners are always hearing about how they need to be on social media, and with COVID-19, it seems like that’s a pretty important tool to be using.

But how is a business owner supposed to know if their efforts on social media are working or not?

This is by far one of the toughest parts of my job as a social media manager: showing the return on investment.

Honestly, people are unreliable at best to tell us where they discovered or first heard about a business. Not only that but they much touch your brand five times before they even remember it. Social media could be four of those five touches and not get the credit when the person is asked.

So what can you measure that gives some sort of indicator of success? Likes? Comments?

The metric I think is almost always the most important one to focus on is reach. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and just about every other social media platform shows a bunch of analytics in your account settings somewhere. Many are confusing to most people and many aren’t all that useful to be honest.

If your content is consistently reaching more people than you have following your account, then you are likely doing something right. If reach is growing consistently then you are definitely doing something right.

The only other metric that’s worth watching carefully is engagement, but more engagement will always result in more reach.

Note: likes don’t matter enough to worry about them.