Nonprofits know they should be paying attention to social media data. Many don’t though, at least in an organized, consistent way. This is in part at least because it can be difficult though to know what is the most important. Social media metric overload can lead to wasting time checking vanity stats or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, inaction. This list can help.
Of course, every social media platform and nonprofit varies. Some nonprofits might find this precise list or order does not fit them or one particular social media channel perfectly. However, this list offers a guide that no matter the platform or nonprofit, it will help you think through and prioritize your nonprofit’s social media tracking to allow you to take action and improve.
The 9 most important social media metrics for nonprofits
9. Impressions and views
Not all impressions are created equal. It’s hard to know if someone is in your target audience or even read or watched your post as opposed to just scanning it. This is why this is the least important metric to focus in on. But it’s important nonetheless. This metric can make sure your posts are actually reaching people. It can help you compare, for example, Facebook and Twitter organic reach in general. However, you can’t judge your social media effectiveness on impressions or views alone. You’ll need to combine it with metrics lower in the list.
8. Basic post interactions such as open rate, view time, favorites, likes
If someone expands your post or watches until the end of your video, this is generally a good sign. The fact that they don’t click it or share it though might mean something isn’t hitting them hard enough. Even if someone likes something doesn’t mean they read it and on some platforms they could even be a bot. Track these interactions, but don’t give too much weight to it.
7. Followers, subscribers or page likes
Some nonprofits might put this lower on the list. After all, the more people that are following you, the greater your long-term social media impact, right? For some nonprofits who might just have a Facebook page or just focus on sharing good quality information, that’s a fair point. For most nonprofits though, you should be focused on getting people to take action off of social media. Having a substantial social media following can be a nice social proof, but it can easily turn into a vanity metric. If most of your followers don’t interact with your posts, or more importantly your nonprofit outside of social media, then your follower count actually does not mean much.
6. Shares
Sharing your posts or page we would argue is more important than following. You should be creating sharable content. Sharing your content usually means that they believe in what you’re posting enough to bring it to their own network. You don’t want passive followers, you want people who take action – and sharing is an easy, but powerful one to take. Plus, if they are willing to share something, they are likely willing to follow you or already are following your account. And don’t just track when someone shares your social media post, track this on your website too.
5. Driving good website traffic
Not all posts have to link back to your website, but you need to mix some in. Keep in mind that sometimes people can share something without actually clicking a link. To make sure people are really engaging with your post and nonprofit, make sure that when you share a link, they are going to your nonprofit website and spending some time there. Most people who are on Facebook want to stay on Facebook. If your posts or page inspires people to get off and check you out further, that means they trust you enough with their time.
Of course, you need to make sure you have a good website. A Facebook page or basic blog can get you by for some time, but your own good quality nonprofit website is a step that nonprofits need to take to create more comprehensive marketing funnels.
4. Social media survey responses.
Every once in a while, check in with your followers. This can be directly on the social platforms and you can supplement this by following up with some of them individually in person or via email. These don’t need to happen so often – quarterly or biannually is likely enough. However, you need to conduct these to validate whether your social media is actually working and how to improve it. Numerical metrics don’t tell the whole story. Get qualitative feedback to help validate your opinions about the quantitative feedback.
3. Thoughtful Comments and Reviews – Including Negative Feedback
Negative reviews of your nonprofit can hit hard. You’re doing all this hard work and someone has the nerve to say something negative? Keep in mind that while this is an important metric, it’s not the only one. Take negative feedback in context and don’t let one person drag your day down. If one person gives a frowning emoji to a Facebook post then it does not mean it was a bad post. It’s OK to post something that stirs a bit of controversy once in a while.
Consistent negative feedback or well thought out negative commentary on social media should be well-documented though. If appropriate, respond and of course learn from the feedback. Make sure if you are on Google or allow Facebook feedback or on Yelp that you do encourage people to give reviews. Build up a positive reputation just in case you do get some negative feedback every once in a while.
As far as getting general comments or positive comments – this is important to track as well. Beyond the fact that you should probably respond to them and comments can help your organic reach, liking or sharing is as easy as clicking a button. Thinking about content enough to comment thoughtfully in public is not quite as easy. Positive, thoughtful comments are a high-value interaction. Keep in mind that meaningful comments do not have to be public either. Try to keep a record of thoughtful direct messages as well.
2. Lower value conversions such as email signups
An online conversion is another way of saying that you inspired someone to take an action that is meaningful to your nonprofit. As you build out your nonprofit social media marketing endeavors, it’s important to be granular here. Clearly define what actions you want people to take for your nonprofit that social media can help you achieve.
While we listed them lower, for some nonprofits, getting a website visitor or even page like might be one of the first conversions you track (see below for more info). For many nonprofits, you should be tracking conversions on your website and it very likely should involve getting someone’s email. You don’t control social media. Twitter could change overnight. You do control your email list. Posting something on social media and then sign-ups for your newsletter or a webinar or a report is a very important metric to track.
1. High-value conversions such as donors, new program participants, new members or volunteers
High-value conversions are the exact opposite of a vanity metric. This is the most important interaction you believe your social media can inspire. How social media can help you achieve your mission? Your high-value conversion generally answers this question.
This can be getting a donor, a volunteer, a new employee, getting someone to an event, or a new member. Think about what your nonprofit needs most that you realistically think social media efforts can achieve.
Not every post should be focused on high-value conversions. You don’t want to be constantly asking for donations or volunteers. It’s highly unlikely someone coming to your Facebook page for the first time is going to donate $10,000. Build up the trust with thank you messages, good articles, videos, and over time try to turn the lower value conversions into high-value ones.
Keep in mind that it can be difficult to track who comes from where. Again, this is why you need to survey people – especially think about surveying the high-value conversions.
OK, that’s a lot of tracking – where can we start?
Focus on one piece of data from “know, like, trust”
If you do have a tracking methodology in place, hopefully, this list can help you improve it. If you don’t, it can be easy to be overwhelmed. Don’t be. Build out your social media tracking piece by piece. While you could go in order from 1 to 10, we would actually recommend trying to track the three main areas of your funnel first. You want people to know, then like and then trust your nonprofit thanks to social media.
Create a document where you are tracking all of your social media platforms and at least one stat in each of these categories. You can update the doc weekly or monthly, but keep in mind your most recent posts might not have had enough time to hit the same stats as your older posts.
Trust
Start a social media metrics doc, defining what a conversion is for your nonprofit. It can be part of an excel or google sheet to track metrics over time.
Eventually, you will want to be tracking conversions on your website such as where donors came from, but your fist conversion metric could even be a website visitors most social media platforms let you track website visitors natively. You can’t always trust the social media platform and we recommend at some point using a link tracking method and diving keeping in Google Analytics.
If you’re not tracking conversions in some way, shape or form, you’re not really tracking your nonprofit’s social media effectiveness.
Like
Track some type of action on your post. Whether it’s shares, or expansions or likes or subscribers. For every platform, choose an interaction you think is meaningful and document it.
Know
Track post impressions. You can generally get this information quite easily and it offers some basic info on the upper end of your nonprofit marketing funnel.
With this info, in a few months you should have a better idea of which types of posts and which platforms are most effective. At that point, you may want to change your social media strategy at least somewhat, and of course dive deeper on the data and expand on your metrics for the next few months. In the end, you might find this is enough though – especially for nonprofits without a dedicated marketing or communications team. As we noted above, a social media survey can go a long way to validating your findings before adapting your strategy too much.
What do we do with all this information?
The first step to orienting your data to actionable analytics
The first step is to track the data somewhere easily accessible and add a column for some subjective notes. Make sure you decide who is managing your nonprofit social media and tracking this. You can update it with notes weeks or monthly. Every month or quarter look back and assess what worked and what didn’t.
Did you try a new type of campaign this month or week? How did it go? Data alone doesn’t talk. If you want your nonprofit to be continually learning and improving your social media, you need to tease out some insights from the data. A/B test different content types, different hashtags, the same post on different platforms, etc. and take note. Take this data and do what you can to orient your social media around interactions that are most meaningful to your nonprofit’s mission.