Social media KPIs (key performance indicators) are the handful of numbers that show whether your social media is doing the job you need it to do. A metric is anything you can count. A KPI is a metric you’ve tied to a goal and a target, like “get 40 website visits a month from Instagram” or “answer every message within four hours”.

The trick is choosing the right few. Below, we explain the difference between KPIs and vanity metrics, list the KPIs that matter for each goal, show you how to calculate the common ones, and finish with an example KPI set you could copy for a local business this month.

KPIs measure progress, vanity metrics measure noise

Vanity metrics are numbers that look nice but don’t tell you whether your business is better off. Follower count is the obvious one. Ten thousand followers who never buy are worth less than five hundred locals who book in regularly.

That doesn’t mean follower numbers are useless. They become a KPI when they connect to a goal, such as growing a local audience before opening a second site. The test is simple: if this number went up or down, would you do anything differently? If not, it’s a vanity metric for you.

Common vanity metrics include:

• Total followers, on their own
• Total likes, with no context of reach
• Impressions, without any sign people did something next
• Post count, which measures effort rather than results

The right social media metrics depend on your goal

Pick one or two goals, then choose the KPIs that sit under them. Trying to improve everything at once means you improve nothing.

Awareness: are new people seeing you?

• Reach: the number of unique accounts that saw your content.
• Impressions: the total number of times it was shown, including repeat views.
• Follower growth rate: how quickly your audience is growing.
• Share of non-followers reached: how much of your reach comes from people who don’t follow you yet. Most platforms now show this in their insights.

Engagement: do people care?

• Engagement rate: interactions as a percentage of reach or followers.
• Comments and shares: worth more than likes, because they take effort and spread your content.
• Saves: a strong sign of useful content, especially on Instagram.
• Video watch time and completion rate: how much of your video people actually watch.

Traffic: do people come to your website?

• Link clicks: clicks from posts, stories, bios and ads.
• Click-through rate (CTR): clicks as a percentage of impressions.
• Social sessions in Google Analytics: visits that arrived from social platforms, which is the more reliable number.

Leads and conversions: does it make money?

• Enquiries, bookings or sales from social: tracked through forms, UTM tags (small codes added to links so Analytics knows where a visit came from) and conversion tracking.
• Conversion rate: the share of social visitors who take the action you want.
• Cost per lead or cost per sale: essential if you run paid social.
• Direct messages that turn into enquiries: often missed, but for many local businesses this is where the work comes from.

Customer care: do you look after people?

• Response time: how long it takes to reply to messages and comments.
• Response rate: the share of messages that get a reply.
• Sentiment: whether comments and mentions are broadly positive, neutral or negative.
• Reviews and recommendations: new reviews on Facebook or Google that come through social.

Engagement rate is easy to calculate once you pick a method

There’s no single official formula, which is why engagement rates quoted online vary so much. Choose one method and stick to it so your figures are comparable month to month.

KPI	Formula	Example
Engagement rate by reach	Total engagements on a post divided by reach, times 100	60 engagements, 1,500 reach = 4%
Engagement rate by followers	Total engagements divided by followers, times 100	60 engagements, 3,000 followers = 2%
Follower growth rate	New followers in the month divided by followers at the start, times 100	90 new, 3,000 at start = 3%
Click-through rate	Link clicks divided by impressions, times 100	45 clicks, 6,000 impressions = 0.75%
Conversion rate	Conversions from social divided by social visits, times 100	6 enquiries, 200 visits = 3%
Cost per lead	Ad spend divided by leads	£300 spend, 15 leads = £20

Engagements usually means reactions, comments, shares and saves added together. Some people include link clicks too. Either is fine, as long as you’re consistent. We prefer engagement rate by reach, because it judges your content on the people who actually saw it.

Targets should come from your own numbers

It’s tempting to search for an “average engagement rate” and aim for that. Published benchmarks vary widely depending on who measured them, which platform, which industry and which formula. Your own history is a better guide.

1. Collect a baseline. Pull the last three months of data for each KPI you’ve chosen.
2. Work out your average. That’s your starting point, warts and all.
3. Set a realistic improvement. A modest monthly gain you can sustain beats a big jump you can’t explain.
4. Tie it to a date. “Increase link clicks from 40 to 60 a month by the end of March” is a target. “Get more clicks” isn’t.
5. Review every quarter. If you smash a target easily, raise it. If you keep missing, look at the content and the goal before blaming the platform.

A monthly report should fit on one page

A good social media report tells you what happened, why, and what you’ll do next. It doesn’t need 30 slides. Keep it to:

• Your KPIs against target, with this month, last month and the same month last year if you have it.
• Your top three posts and what made them work.
• One or two things that didn’t work and what you learnt.
• Actions for next month, such as more video, a new posting time or a test ad.

Pull the numbers from each platform’s insights (Meta Business Suite, LinkedIn page analytics, TikTok analytics and so on) and from Google Analytics for website traffic and conversions. Do it on the same day each month so the data is like for like.

Here’s a simple KPI set for a local business

Picture a family-run café in Guildford with Instagram and Facebook accounts. The owner wants more locals through the door and more bookings for weekend brunch. A sensible KPI set might be:

• Awareness: monthly reach among people in and around Guildford, aiming to grow it steadily from the current baseline.
• Engagement: engagement rate by reach on Instagram, plus saves on menu posts.
• Traffic: clicks on the booking link in the Instagram bio and Facebook page.
• Conversions: weekend bookings that came from social, tracked with a UTM-tagged booking link and by asking “how did you hear about us?”.
• Customer care: reply to every message and comment within four hours during opening times.

Five numbers, one page, reviewed once a month. That’s enough to steer the content and see whether social media is paying its way. If you’d like a hand choosing or tracking these, our social media management service includes monthly reporting built around your goals.

Related reading: How to Use Google Analytics 4 for Your Small Business and What Are Content Pillars and How Do You Create Them?.

Frequently asked questions

How many social media KPIs should I track?

Between three and six is plenty for most small businesses. Pick at least one that links directly to revenue, such as enquiries or bookings, so you’re not judging success on engagement alone.

What is a good engagement rate on social media?

It depends on the platform, your industry, your audience size and the formula used. Rather than chasing an industry figure, compare your engagement rate against your own last three months and aim to improve it.

Is reach or impressions more important?

Reach is usually more useful, as it counts unique people. Impressions count every showing, so one keen follower viewing a post five times inflates the number.

How often should I report on social media KPIs?

Monthly works well for most businesses. Check quickly each week to spot problems, but judge performance over a full month or quarter, as single weeks bounce around.

Get social media reporting that means something

Delivered Social manages social media for SMEs and owner-managed businesses across Surrey, Hampshire and West Sussex, and every client gets reporting built around real goals rather than vanity numbers. Find out more about our social media management, or contact the team to talk about what you want social media to achieve.