Who hasn’t gotten excited upon noticing that a client’s page has many likes or that a posted photo garnered a lot of likes? But, is having a lot of followers and likes really important, and does it signify that your digital marketing strategy is successful?
Reactions to posts, the number of followers, and the number of views are the most common vanity metrics, as these metrics do not provide much insight for the social media analyst to understand whether the actions taken were indeed effective. However, a high number of likes and followers, for example, serves to “make a good impression” and also “inflate the ego.”
Therefore, when faced with many likes, followers, high click-through rates, and bounce rates; it’s important to observe these numbers, reflecting on the context in which they were obtained. After all, it’s essential that you analyze the growth of your social media considering the quality of the base, increasing the number of people interested in your product/service, and not the number of people who will eventually like your posts. Winning customers and promoters of your brand should be the priority.
What Are the Main Vanity Metrics?
- Likes;
- Shares;
- Views;
- Click-through rates;
- Bounce rates;
- App downloads, etc.
Should Vanity Metrics Be Ignored?
No. However, these metrics should not be the basis of your social media analysis. Pay more attention to metrics that “tell a story,” i.e., those that will help you create sales opportunities and give you the means to think of actions that will make your visitors move forward in the conversion process.
Therefore, focus more on conversion rates, the number of unique visitors, customer acquisition cost, etc., which will certainly provide more insights for you and your digital marketing team to reflect on whether you are truly generating good results or not. In fact, we wrote a blog post for iClips on how to know if your social media strategy is successful. It’s worth checking out!
