I’ve sat in a lot of marketing reviews where someone points to a follower count or a like total and calls it a win.
I’ve also sat in rooms where the CEO asks what any of it actually did for the business and no one has a good answer.I’ve also sat in rooms where the CEO asks what any of it actually did for the business and no one has a good answer.
Follower count is a vanity metric, until it isn’t.
Raw follower numbers don’t tell you much on their own. A hundred highly engaged followers in your target demographic are worth more than ten thousand passive ones. But sustained follower growth, especially when correlated with business outcomes like web traffic or leads, is a legitimate signal that your brand is building awareness in the right direction.
The key word is correlation. Track follower growth alongside something that matters to the business.
Impressions tell you about reach, not impact.
Impressions show you how many times your content appeared in front of someone. They don’t tell you whether that person cared. Combine impressions with engagement rate for a more honest picture. A post with 100,000 impressions and a 0.1% engagement rate is under performing. A post with 10,000 impressions and a 5% engagement rate is hitting its audience.
The metrics I actually care about.
Web traffic from social media is one of the clearest signals that content is converting attention into action. At SPORTIME, we tracked web traffic alongside social performance and saw a 25% increase in traffic as our social strategy matured. That’s a real business outcome.
Conversion rate matters if you have a direct-response goal. At DealNews, we drove an 18% increase in on-site conversions through paid and organic social strategies. That’s the kind of number that justifies the budget.
Cost per acquisition is the metric I built reporting frameworks around at The Forest Road Company. For B2B marketing especially, understanding what it costs to bring in a qualified lead is essential for resource allocation.
What to stop tracking.
Likes, on their own. Story views without a follow-up action. Reach without engagement context. These numbers fill dashboards but rarely inform decisions.
Build your reporting around the question “what decision will this data help us make?” If you can’t answer that, the metric probably doesn’t belong in your report.
