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If reviewing your social media metrics feels like getting on a scale for a weekly weigh-in, there’s no need to be nervous or put it off until next week anymore.

Yes, your social media analytics can be boring, overwhelming, and even confusing, but if the queens of RuPaul’s drag race have taught me anything, honey, those uncomfortable feelings don’t have to be your reality, especially if you know what you are looking for–and add a little fun to the equation.

When you combine a social media strategy that aligns with your goals with an understanding of how to measure the five most important KPIs, you’ll stop being scared of your weekly weigh-in and give yourself more credit for the hard work you put into growing your business on social media.

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about:

  • My passion for RuPaul’s Drag Race
  • Why checking your data feels like standing on a scale
  • The boring side of social media
  • Choosing storytelling over selling
  • Aligning with your goals, not your competition
  • Using social media as a portfolio
  • The five KPIs you need to track

This Episode Was Made Possible By:

Social Media Starter Kit Free Course
The Social Media Starter Kit is your chance to pull back the curtain and get insights on how to build a social media strategy that works for you, learn how to create (and implement) a simple and effective content plan, convert followers into buyers, and much more.
Register for this FREE course and gain the confidence you need to use social media as a tool to grow your business.

Memorable Quotes:

  • “Social media right now feels very heavy. We're all collectively feeling it, but you may be surprised about what is actually working for you in your business.” – Andréa Jones
  • “This is why looking at the numbers is so, so, so key because once you start digging into the actual value in what you're delivering, then you can repeat that again and again instead of wasting time on things that aren't it, honey, not it.” – Andréa Jones
  • “In reality, as business owners, what we really wanna do is grow our business. We don't care about millions and millions of followers. We don't care about all the likes and comments in the world. At the end of the day, we're trying to grow our business. And that can be different things for different people.” – Andréa Jones
  • “When we think about reach and impressions, we do wanna see these numbers increasing. However, if we see reach and impressions increasing and we do not see community growth increasing, these are not our people, okay? They're not for us. So that means you may be reaching a lot of people who aren't following you.” – Andréa Jones
  • “Conversions are fun because this is actually where we wanna be as business owners, right? We want people to move away from social media to somewhere else. And so, I consider conversions moving off the social media platform. So signing up for an email, booking a discovery call, purchasing a product, all of those things are great.” – Andréa Jones
  • “I do wanna note that we don't wanna get too caught up in our feelings about those metrics that give us the endorphin hit. ” – Andréa Jones
  • “Followers likes, comments, and y'all, Instagram knows this. Facebook knows this. TikTok knows this. They're gonna try to keep pressing that endorphin button, but you aren't an influencer. I'm gonna repeat that again. You are not an influencer, okay? So you are a business owner.” – Andréa Jones

Resources Mentioned:

Metricool Social Media Management Tool

Watch the Episode Below:

Transcript

Andréa Jones (00:01):
Are you looking at your social media going, where is the charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent? Honey, while in today's episode, you better work. Okay, <laugh>, I'm using tons of RuPaul references to make social media success feel fun. So we're gonna examine some of the best metrics that'll help you slay the competition and sashay your way to the crown. Am I going too far? We're about to find out. Let's get into it.

Intro (00:38):
Welcome to The Savvy Social Podcast, the show that blends stories and strategies to help businesses create engaged and profitable online communities using the unique power of social media. And now, your host, Andréa Jones.

Andréa Jones (00:56):
Okay. Y'all know, or maybe you don't know, I am a huge, huge RuPaul's Drag Race fan, Sasha Colby winning the Crown this last season feels absolutely correct to me. And so I wanna talk today about Drag Race, but then also we're really talking about social media numbers.

(01:17):
So I find that as business owners, we look at our social media and we go, Ugh, do I have to look at this data? It doesn't feel good to me. It's not fun, it's boring. I was recently talking with a friend and she was talking about how social media feels like stepping on a scale, you know, like, oh, I have to weigh in today. And so I wanna kind of make social media numbers feel a little bit more fun. And I also wanna talk about it in a serious way as well, because honestly, social media right now feels very heavy.

(01:57):
We're all collectively feeling it, but you may be surprised about what is actually working for you in your business. I was talking with another friend about this recently as well, and she was saying that the posts, the Instagram reels, the content that is the fastest for her to make, seems to be the most popular. And when she spends all this time in energy editing and adding sound effects and transitions, and she goes to post-it, and it's like crickets, right? So this is why looking at the numbers is so, so, so key because once you start digging into the actual value in what you're delivering, then you can repeat that again and again, instead of wasting time on things that aren't it honey, not it. So first up, we're serving social media goals realness. So when you're looking at your social media goals, we want to make sure that we are aligned with where we are going.

(03:01):
So it's very easy on social media to look at a competitor, to look at a popular account and go, oh, I want that. When in reality as business owners, what we really wanna do is grow our business. We don't care about millions and millions of followers. We don't care about all the likes and comments in the world. At the end of the day, we're trying to grow our business. And that can be different things for different people. So for example, one of my clients is a speaker. That's how she makes most of her money is speaking gigs. And so for her, her social media is a portfolio of what she can do. Most of her speaking gigs are closed through relationship selling, meaning she's talking with event planners, she's talking with coordinators, she's talking with people who design events, people in her industry, people who put on like retreats and conferences and summits and one day workshops.

(03:55):
And so her network is her net worth. And so for her, social media is about networking and it's about showing what she can do for her. Likes, comments, follows do mean something because it brings a level of influence to her work. So we're posting a lot of her speaking reels, clips from her talks, but we're also creating content with the purpose, with the goal of reaching a mass audience and having mass appeal. Now, in a total other vein, we have a client who works very specifically with high level think like c-suite level black and brown women in corporate America. And that is a very specific demographic. It does not have mass appeal. We're talking to a very specific group of people, and her offers have a very specific price point. So mass appeal isn't the goal. The goal for her is to reach the right people with the right message at the right time.

(04:55):
And so if you just look at her Instagram or look at her LinkedIn, you may go, wow, this doesn't have mass appeal. But that's not the point. The point is to get people into her funnel. And, you know, we've helped her, you know, also book things like speaking at FedEx or she just published a book or, you know, some of those things as well can really help bolster her social media goals and success. But really having those goals outlined will be so helpful in you snatching that crown, honey. I almost forgot my RuPaul references. <Laugh> my Drag Race references. Okay, category is category is y'all KPIs or key performance indicators. So there are five different ones that I wanna go through today. Five different types of metrics you can track. I teach this inside of the Savvy Social School. We go really in depth with this, setting this up so that you can figure out how to do this for yourself.

(05:54):
But I'm gonna do a quick down and dirty recap. This is like my confessional moment describing what's happening in the workroom. Okay? So the first metric is community growth. This is one that we tend to focus in on a lot as business owners because it's so public. So I'm talking followers, I'm talking subscribers. If you're on different channels, even potentially views on a platform like TikTok or YouTube. But really this is your signal, like, hey, I'm one of the popular kids. Okay?

(06:27):
So community growth is great, but it's only one of five different types of metrics that you can track. And we want the whole set, honey. So community growth, number one. Number two, impact. So impact is how many people you've reached and how many times you've reached them. So how many people you've reached is called Reach. Oftentimes when we're looking inside of metrics in your app, so in Instagram, in Facebook, you're looking at reach.

(06:56):
The other metric is impressions. The difference between reach and impressions. So impressions are the number of times your content has been viewed. Reach is the number of people who have viewed it. So your impressions are probably always gonna be higher than your reach. And that's a good thing. So if people are seeing posts multiple times, so for instance, on a platform like Instagram, when you have a carousel post, you know, sometimes Instagram will show the first slide. If they don't interact, Instagram will deliver it again with a second slide. So we're coming back, honey. Okay?

(07:29):
So when we think about reach and impressions, we do wanna see these numbers increasing. However, if we see reach and impressions increasing and we do not see community growth increasing, these are not our people, okay? They're not for us. So that means you may be reaching a lot of people who aren't then following you.

(07:51):
Third metric to track is engagement. So when I think about engagement, I do love a good, like I do love a good comment. These are very public engagement metrics, but we gotta go behind the talk to the hidden metrics. These are my favorite metrics. We're talking saves, we're talking shares. This isn't public knowledge, okay? This is a little super secret hideaway over here. When we think about saves, when we think about shares, they're actually a huge indication of interest because someone is either saving that post to revisit later, or they're literally sharing it with other people, which we all know, word of mouth marketing is the best form of marketing, right? So instead of patting ourselves on the back going, oh, we did that. Yes. someone else is going, look at her. I love her. I love that journey for her. You get it?

(08:52):
Okay, we're still in the category of key performance metrics, key performance indicators to track. And we talked about community growth, we talked about impact, we talked about engagement. I have two more intent. I love a metric like intent because on a platform like Instagram, it shows that someone is watching you. Like they're, they've got their eye on you, they're definitely paying attention. And so when we think about intent on Instagram, for instance, when you're saying, oh, hey, y'all go click that link in the bio, how many people are actually even going to your profile? How many people are even clicking the link in the bio? If you aren't measuring the intent of that user, you may look at a post and go, this post tanked, right? However, if you dig into those metrics and you look at something like, oh, people click the link to go to my profile, but they didn't click the link in my bio.

(09:51):
Maybe there's some on your profile that you need to spruce up a little, okay? So when we think about intent, we wanna measure things like profile visits, even duration of video view. So platforms like Facebook for instance, count three seconds, three seconds as a video view. And to me, three seconds is not enough <laugh>, it's not enough. It means nothing to me. So when I look in my metrics, I wanna see, okay, great, three second video views. That's cute, but what else? How long did people watch? On average, if I have a 30 minute video and most people watch 15 minutes, all right, that's good, but if I have a 30 minute video, most people watch 10 seconds. I mean, I just wasted my time, right? So we wanna think about ways that we are looking into the metrics, digging into them, and, and really seeing how they impact our business.

(10:43):
Okay? Last one in this little quintuplet is conversions. Conversions are fun because this is actually where we wanna be as business owners, right? We want people to move away from social media to somewhere else. And so I consider conversions moving off the social media platform. So signing up for an email booking a discovery call, purchasing a product all of those things are great. Visiting your website when we're measuring if a post was successful, if someone left Instagram, okay, they left Instagram and they're on your website, that's a really good sign because we already know they had to tap on your profile, they had to click the link in the bio, and then you have multiple links. You have to choose a link that they wanna go to. Then they're on their website. It's been a journey for them and we're happy that they're here.

(11:32):
Okay, <laugh>. So when we're thinking about conversions, we do wanna measure if people are taking those steps. And sometimes as business owners, we get real excited and link, we see our community growth going up, we see engagement going up, but then we look at our business and we go, oh, our business isn't also going up. You know, our revenue isn't increasing. And so you may wanna start looking at things like intent. You may wanna look at conversions and start digging into those numbers because that's really where the magic can happen.

(12:04):
All right, let's take a quick break. When we come back, I wanna share some success stories, and then I wanna give you some tools for how to measure this moving forward. We'll be right back.

(12:19):
[Podcast Ad break] Social media is constantly changing. I know that you know that, but not all of these changes are pertinent to your business. That's why I created The Feed. The Feed is a private audio experience of curated social media news and updates that relate to your business. So ditch the overwhelm and download the feed today. And no, this isn't a subscription service. Pay one fee and get access to our entire back catalog along with every single episode released in the future. Head on over to onlinedrea.com/feed to start feeling like a social media expert today. [Podcast Ad break]

(13:06):
All right, and we're back. I'm actually pulling up this from my Instagram broadcast channel. So if you're not, if you're not in there, why aren't you? Come on in. I share my client success stories, you know, give you a little bit of tea behind the scenes on how things are actually working, especially those hidden metrics that I love so much.

(13:26):
So I'm gonna use my client, Linda, as an example because I think this video is very interesting in the metrics. So she is hosting a live event. Actually at the time of recording this. She's in the midst of her conference. It's called the Being Conference. And instead of just posting, Hey, buy your ticket to the Being Conference, we started storytelling. She's talking about how many challenges she's had in her own career. She's talking about things like microaggressions, you know, things that her audience really connects with and relates with.

(14:07):
And so this Instagram reel got 1400 views, 14,000 views, excuse me. You can see the likes and comments. 188 likes 18 comments. But what I think is really interesting here is the 10 saves. Ooh, don't you love that hidden metric. 10 saves. So we're looking at people who not only liked and commented, but they saved that video and went, oh, I need to come back to this later. Or one of my other clients who is Afrosexology, we always look at the hidden metrics because they have a very spicy content feed, right? So some people don't feel comfortable liking and commenting on a post about masturbation, for instance. And so while we look at things like likes and comments on this post, particularly 36 comments, y'all, okay? 36 comments, keep that in your mind. But then also we like to look at impressions because people like to look, they wanna look, they don't wanna touch 55,000 impressions.

(15:09):
And then from there, 720 shares, 672 saves. Remember only 36 comments, okay? So people were really all in there going, Ooh, I like this. No, no, no. They were going, Ooh, I gotta save this for later and keep this on the down low, right? So when we think about those hidden metrics, this is where the beauty happens. This is where the magic happens. So I dare you, I double dog dare you to go to your platform of choice. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, even if you nasty. Look into your insights and look at those hidden metrics. I like to just look at this once a month and I'm gonna give you some tools for how you can track this regularly, some tools for success in your workroom. However, I do wanna note that we don't wanna get too caught up in our feelings about those metrics that give us the endorphin hit.

(16:08):
Followers likes, comments, and y'all, Instagram knows this. Facebook knows this. Tiktok knows this. They're gonna try to keep pressing that endorphin button, but you aren't an influencer. I'm gonna repeat that again. You are not an influencer, okay? So you are a business owner. Business owners navigate social media differently than influencers. Influencers want as many likes and views as they can possibly get because that's how they get brand deals, okay? So they may be out here with the titties hanging out. That's good, that's cool for them because they're just going for mass appeal.

(16:46):
You, my friend, my dear listener, are a business owner and you're running a business here. And while mass appeal can be great and it, it could definitely help a little bit, we don't want a bunch of looky-loos. We want people who are ready to take action. Action, meaning visiting our website, listening to our podcast, downloading our free offers, signing up for discovery calls and paying us, giving us that money, honey.

(17:11):
Okay, <laugh>. So let's talk about how do we track all of this? Because the biggest question that I get from my students especially is, Andrea, this is great. And, and, and I don't have time for this. I do not have time for this. I'm gonna give you a super easy way to track your social media success. One that's free, one that's paid. The free one is simply writing it down. Is it pretty? No. Will it help? Yes. So once a month, on the first of the month, put it in your Google calendar, social media metrics. I want you pick three, I gave you five. Today we're gonna narrow it down to three. What are the three metrics that will move your business forward? For example, I want people to visit my website. So every month you're gonna look at how many people visited your website from Instagram, or I wanna get more comments.

(18:09):
So every month you're gonna write down the number of comments you got that month. The reason that we're writing this down is our inner saboteur is in here trying to live her life. Our inner saboteur is gonna go, girl, you didn't get any followers this month. And you may believe your inner saboteur because she loud, she is very loud, but do not believe her. Write it down and actually track it because you'll then see your growth over time. The second way to do this is paid, but we are currently using Metricool. And I really like their metrics tracking. Metricool. You can get our affiliate link at onlinedrea.com slash metricool. It's cute. They have the graphs, the charts you add in your accounts, and then you can actually, it'll, it'll track it for you. It's a paid tool though. Okay?

(18:59):
All right. In conclusion, if you wanna lip sync for your life, we wanna measure our metrics, okay? We are going to write them down. We're gonna look at our top five, choose the three. That will be our all winners season finale episode, and we're gonna track that every week. Okay? So if you don't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen in here? Amen.

(19:33):
Y'all go out, go forth, track your metrics, and I'll see you on another episode. I don't think I'm gonna do the RuPaul puns too much. I don't know. I really had fun. I hope y'all had fun too. Ok bye.

About onlinedrea

Andréa Jones is a content and marketing strategist who helps brands and creators simplify their marketing with human-first, AI-smart strategies. With over a decade of experience, she’s designed scalable content systems, guided thousands of business owners through social media’s constant shifts, and produced resources that have reached over 5,000 students worldwide. She’s also the host of the award-winning Mindful Marketing Podcast, where she shares practical strategies for building sustainable, stress-free marketing that actually works.