5 Things to Measure Instead of Your Follower Count
The number of social media users in 2019 was 3.484 billion. Considering the time and effort you put into your socials it’s only fair expecting that at-least a few thousands of those billions to follow you, right?!
Throughout life we’re taught to focus on numbers, and whether this is dressage scores or pay checks; the higher the number the better. Here at EQuerry we’re not immune to getting hung up on our follower count, however we know that there are far more important metrics available on social media that are significant to us. We’re not suggesting that you should stop caring about your follower count, but consider the one big problem that this number presents: It won’t give you the whole picture! Relying on this measure alone is like aiming to ride Grand Prix but never entering a test higher than Prelim level. Yes, you will become impressively good at the test, but it won’t be useful for helping you reach your target. So for the sake of your business, start taking measures of the following five metrics:
Comment Rate: Your images might grab the attention of your follower, in fact you might even get a few likes! It is however a totally different skill to keep their attention. Paying attention to your comment rate is a good measure of how engaging your content really is. How so? Because only people who are invested in what you do will stay for long enough to write a sentence in response to your post. Think about it, what content will receive a comment from you, versus a single like? Comments = engagement, and engagement is a sure sign of a healthy and thriving community.Similarly, you should be seeing responses to your inbox, particularly if you use Stores regularly. And don’t forget to check your ‘pending inbox’! It sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how many people miss this. Just tap the blue ‘x requests’ in the top right of your Instagram inbox to see messages from people you haven’t previously engaged with.
Saves: If you have a business or creator account you’ll be familiar with the insights you get when you click the little bookmark icon (it tells you how many people have saved your post for future reference). When compared to like counts and comments, it’s usually a pretty small number for most people, but that doesn’t mean it’s not significant. Not only does it have an impact for algorithm ranking, saving posts tends to be how people keep track of their favourite creators and accounts. In short, a save means that another user want to come back to your account and content. You should pay attention to which content gets more saves than others and try to figure out why.
Pssst: Once a post has lots of saves, don’t ever delete or archive it as it will lest erase your audience’s breadcrumb trail back to your work!
Shares: Shares from other users have taken more pivotal role than ever. Organic exposure via Explore and Hashtags is becoming increasingly difficult, so as Instagram grows the shares from other users have become the new currency to organic exposure. The option to share posts to your stories means followers can immediately spread the love when they come across content that resonates, ultimately bringing new eyes to your page than the algorithm-systems would throw up in a week. Again, not every post is going to be a sharer, but if you’re sharing something of real value, it’s likely other people will want to do the same.
Profile Views: Instagram business- or creator accounts have a myriad of statistics available at your finger tips, but some of these are more useful than others. Profile views, in our experience, holds a high significance as it provides a reflection of how many people saw your post and as a result decided to go and check our the rest of your account. As a measure of how captivated our audience is by our posts, it is also something that can’t be faked by spam accounts and bots. You can’t trace where your visitors went on from after visiting your post, but subsequent website visits and follows will of course be something you can take measures of.
Psst: The websites we create for our clients all have a built-inn analytics dashboard! Best part of it is that you don’t need a deep understanding of social media analytics to understand your traffic sources. Win win!
Conversions: Perhaps surprising, but this is the most important metric on your Instagram! Some people have popular accounts that don’t convert. Likewise, you might have a really small audience who’s engagement rate blows other’s out of the water! At the end of the day, you only spend time and effort on your social media to convert your audience to customers or clients, so if you’re not measuring your conversions you better get started. You should collect as much data you can on your website to make sure you can keep track of what content resonates with your visitors, both existing and potential. Treat your social media and not only your IG account as a discovery tool, as sales following social posts and campaigns tend to be more gradual than instant.
Pssst: If you can, add a ‘How did you find us’ question into your check-out our booking process. This way to can learn how your customers or clients found you and utilise the information to further build your brand!