Here are the social media metrics reporters should be watching instead of likes

“That post performed awful and I don’t know why.” That’s what a reporter told me this week during a feedback session on how to grow and improve her personal station-affiliated social media page.

Why did she think it was awful? Because it didn’t have a lot of likes or comments.

This is common in social media, where performance gets judged by what people can see on the platform and that’s mostly likes, shares and comments.

Those metrics do play a role but they definitely don’t tell the entire picture, and I’d argue they are not the most important.

Interestingly last week, I posted something on my personal LinkedIn page that had very few likes but the impression count was huge (compared to other posts), and the number of profile views it drove was significant.

It would have been easy for me to say that it didn’t work by not looking deeper, but the impressions are important to me and the profile views are really key.

I’m going to share the social media metrics that are most important for reporters to focus on and how to actually find them.

1. Reach (or accounts reached)

This shows you how many people your post actually reached. This doesn’t mean that people stopped and read your post, but it was at least seen.

If the post didn’t get seen, it likely wasn’t because it was a bad story but it could be an issue with what time the post went up, how the headline was written, the photo used or even how the post was written. There are best practices for each of these that have to be followed, so if the post didn’t do what you hoped, review the packaging.

How to find the metric: In Meta, select Professional Dashboard, choose Insights, then Content, and open the post.

2. Shares

When it comes to actions that readers can take on a platform, shares is the most meaningful, because a human thought enough of the post to share it with another person.

Shares often match our journalism principles because they are typically stories that impact people’s lives, news they can use and breaking information.

Understanding the kinds of stories that generate the most shares should influence the kind of content to do more of in the future or at least the kinds you should put on social media.

How to find the metric: Same place as Reach (the Professional Dashboard)

3. Heading

Getting link clicks is obviously harder to do in social media today because platforms like Facebook have downgraded link posts, but there are strategies you can use to get posts that have links seen, like including pinned links in comments.

I’d take 200 clicks over 400 likes any day, so this is why this metric is so important.

Similar to shares, you should understand the stories that are generating the most clicks so you can prioritize those stories and the approach you used (was the link in the first comment, did you use a graphic).

How to find the metric: In Meta in the post Insights under post interactions or link clicks.

4. Engaged sessions or time on page

This helps you understand if people spent a quality amount of time with the content. Clickbait headlines can be the single biggest reason that your time on page is low, so create headlines that create curiosity but don’t go too far.

But there are other factors to consider that help with time on page:

• Did the story easily help the reader get the answer(s) they came for?
• Is there multimedia in the body of the story to engage the reader?
• Is there a format that easily guides someone through the story?
• Were there interactives used like maps or quizzes to hold attention?

How to find the metric: Open Google Analytics, go to Reports, then Engagement, then Pages and Screens, and search for the article URL.

5. Scroll Depth (or completion rate)

I have found this to be the most useful metric when it comes to engagement because it helps you understand not just if someone spent time but how far they got.

You can usually make reasonable assumptions about why readers reached that point by looking at the content, format and layout and where they stopped.

This may help your news organization understand either types of stories (crime vs. sports) or approach (a long meeting story vs. a list from a meeting).

How to find the metric: In Google Analytics, go to Reports, Engagement, then Events and open “scroll,” which counts readers who reached about 90% of the article

6. Returning visitors from social media

I love this one, though it’s hard to create the behavior. The idea is that once someone reads a story that they discovered through social media, they come back to your website the next day.

The reality of getting someone to open a browser and go directly to your website the next day may be challenging, but if you effectively use newsletter sign ups in your story you will have a more direct way of achieving that.

How to find the metric: In Google Analytics 4, go to Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic Acquisition, and open facebook / social or instagram/social.

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